Quality, Not Quantity of Readers, is the Value Driver of Your Business Blog

By Kfir Pravda | Published: October 14, 2007

Many bloggers are statistics’ slaves. They check their readership daily, trying to increase it in every way possible. We all compare figures, learning new tactics on how to generate more views, and looking for the biggest amount of unique users.

The need for readers is clear. It derives from two main reasons:

1. There is no way today to value blogs tailored to this media. Therefore we use traditional metrics. Not only bloggers are using them – advertisers are part of the game as well.

2. Ego is an important part of the human nature. Nothing brings a bigger smile to my face then seeing zillion readers on my stats.

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Talking about Ego

A Different Metric

There is another way of looking at this media form:

Let’s say that I am selling products to mobile operators, and I use my company’s blog to convey my marketing message. Which scenario will be more beneficial for my company:

SCENARIO A: I have 3000 readers, including my mom and sister in law.

SCENARIO B: I have 100 readers, all of them are heads of purchase departments in mobile operators.

Or let’s take a different example. Let’s say I am a political blogger with strong opinions and no money to open my own think tank. Which scenario will provide more value:

SCENARIO A: I have 10,000 readers across the globe.

SCENARIO B: I have only 5 readers – the American President and Vice President, UK Prime Minister, French President and, well, my mom and sister.

I believe that we all agree that scenario B will bring more business value to my company, or more influence to my political blog than the other one.

How to make your blog closer to the second scenarios is a different story. But let’s agree that in most cases, and for most bloggers, size doesn’t matter – it’s what’s inside that counts.

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  • however, I dare say, the president will never read a blog that no one reads, and will most probably read what is posted on the most popular blog around. That is why politicians bother reading the popular newspapers. not because they want to know the news as much as know what is on most people's minds. And that is determined by what is written in the most popular publications.

    you cannot escape the power of numbers.
  • I totally agree, but if the President is reading in Google Reader he's not going to show up as a page view, and I have know way of knowing that he read my blog. How would authors know if influentials are reading if they aren't commenting?
  • The beginner, Jon Burg, thanks a lot for your comments. they are touching an important topic, which is basically a marketing issue - how can I reach my readers.

    I did not touch this topic yet, and I am working on a post that describes how you can get to these readers. In any case it is not an easy task.

    However, this post doesn't discuss the method to reach scenario B. It only expresses my belief that in some cases high quality readers can bring more value to bloggers than a large amount of heterogeneous readers.

    The beginner - you state that the president won't read something that no one else does. well, I believe that it depends on the value of the content in it for him. If it is an in-depth analysis on the way that the north Korean regime operates - I beg to differ. Yes, it is an extreme scenario, but look at it as such, as an extreme example to make a point.

    Jon - you are asking how can a blogger know who are his readers if they don't comment. This is a tricky issue, no doubt there. There are methods of doing so. Maybe not with the president, but certainly with other groups. If you write your blog to a specific group, in most cases you can interact with it in other ways such as conferences, events, and social networks. You can sometimes even ask the readers who they are. I'd love to start writing about it - why don't we write a post about together?
  • i remmeber this idea from your lecture at radvision.

    btw, it's true not only for blogs, sites etc...but also for a lot of other topics, especially in real life.
  • I see your point, that targeting your audience is important. This is exactly why google's advertising is considered a generation ahead of putting an ad in the paper. And there is lot's of stuff written on that on the web.

    However, what I wanted to stress, is that focused targeting of your audience is one thing, and the example you gave is not a good one for that.

    The very nature of blogs is that the authority you have is largely based on your following. You are the wiz if the whole world reads your blog. You are nobody if no one reads it. The Prez would never read a blog that is small, as opposed to a specific paper written for his eyes by people with authority in a field. Blogging is different.

    As the old Zen master once said:

    If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one to hear it's sound...

    A blogger with no readers does not exist.
  • The beginner - i have to agree with your sentence "The very nature of blogs is that the authority you have is largely based on your following" and disagree with "You are the wiz if the whole world reads your blog. You are nobody if no one reads it". If you want the whole world to read your writing - go work for the press :)

    You are assuming that I want the press to read my blog - this is not the case in all blogs. Also, press figures are much higher than blog figures - and the whole notion of the blog industry is that there niche can provide value.

    This post also talks mainly about business bloggers- where mass media is not always their target audience.



    Hagai - true....
  • Idetrorce
    very interesting, but I don't agree with you

    Idetrorce
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