Seth Godin writes daily and has over 1,000,000 followers on his email list.
I write daily and have around 1,000 email followers.
Metrics.
For many years a part of my work was engaged with digital marketing. So much of that was about building traffic to websites, spending money on promotion to draw people to your site then sell them something. Metrics were everything.
As I’ve gone past 300 daily posts and loving writing more and more, I muse on how I no longer care about metrics the way I used to, I have become clearer and clearer about what truly matters. As one of Peter Gabriel’s songs highlights for me, I’m clearer on clear on what is Signal over what is Noise.
I muse on metrics and meaning today after yesterday, in “The Power of Intention – “This is post 300””, writing about how that day marked post #300 of my posting daily on this site, and noted “Listen to your intention. Follow it without always having to know where it will lead. You will create serendipities. Amazing things can and will happen!”
The digital marketing geek in me loves to check my site stats each day, but no longer for the reasons I used to. Building traffic for the sake of traffic? No more.
All I want to do is reach those who wish to be reached by my eclectic writing on and around the subject of #OpenLeadership.
When I look at metrics on the app on my phone each day (old habits die hard!), the ones I love to see now are a) which countries site visitors come from, and b) which pages have been viewed. These metrics power my imagination.
When I see a new country with several site visits, I can imagine someone finding my site as they sit in a coffee shop and sharing with someone else, then it spreading to others in that land. As I write this my little site has been viewed from over 80 countries all over the world. Each day I love to see the range of geographies, it brings me joy.
Other times I see a post I wrote some time ago get a jump in views over a period of a few days and I imagine somebody being o write their own post and link to my post in their writing, as I so often do with the writing of others. Sometimes traffic to a particular post really jumps and I can tell it has spread through a tribe.
All of this comes back to Purpose for me. A keyword for me is Impact, and I do love it when I can help leaders scale their impact. At the same time, few things mean more to me than when someone tells me I’ve made a difference for them. It is not about metrics, it is about humans, one human at a time.
Recently a friend I had not seen for years asked to see me for coffee. When we met, they told me why they had reconnected. It turns out they had read one of my posts and it had made a real difference for them. They simply wanted to meet so they could thank me in person.
A hug, their presence, their words of affirmation. Unknowingly, they covered my personal top three of the “Five Love Languages”.
Some metrics mean more to us than others. To have had an impact on one person who can then share their appreciation in a way that lands for you, that experience was powerful for me
Be clear on your purpose, be clear on what matters to you.
Tune in to your own signal. All else is simply noise.
