So it’s been about half a year since Jen McCown invited SQL Bloggers to post their new years resolutions. I made mine and I’ve kept up with it, but I’m going to reassess that resolution now.
If you remember, my resolution was to blog once a week (with articles to go live every Wednesday at noon), keep to technical content, and include an illustration with each post. Check, check and check. My goal was to get 4 times as many readers than the previous year.
Well, I’m not quite there. Google Analytics tells me I’m at 3.3 times as many readers as the first half of 2010 … So what do I need to do to get to 4.0?
Some ideas that came to mind were:
- I could post five or six times a month instead of four. Going for volume.
- I could focus on plugging my site in other places.
- I could participate in every meme monday, t-sql tuesday and un-sql friday out there.
But none of those are appealing. Those thoughts don’t light a fire under me. So I’m going to say “You know what? 3.3 is good enough“.
So what does light a fire under me?
- Writing about SQL
- Drawing stupid illustrations.
I’m Giving Up My New Year’s Resolution
So I’m giving up the goal of the resolution, but I’m not changing my blogging habits… At least not too much. You’ll notice this post still got posted on a Wednesday at noon.
In The End It Wasn’t About Readership
Besides, I’ve realized that it’s not really readership I was after, it was the commenters! (Commenters! Commenters! Commenters!). The lurkers can continue lurking, but I’d rather have 10 comments on a post than 10,000 page views. The feedback is really good to have and I’m happy with that.
And to other bloggers out there, I suspect that you feel the same. My guess is that you’d prefer ten new active readers versus ten thousand new passive readers.
An Illustration
So I’m breaking my own rules. This isn’t a technical post and the illustration here has nothing to do with the subject of this post. So why do I include an illustration of Wicket Baggins here?
Because I can!
