Sometimes you need someone really smart to tell you something you already know in order to get you to snap back into reality.
A few days ago I wrote up an incredibly self-indulgent piece about the direction of this small, personal-publishing venture. I didn’t expect much of a response. To my infinite surprise, I heard back from two people who I read, follow, and respect. Those responses meant the world to me and helped me refocus on what’s important.1
My wife started writing a few months ago. Initially, she worried about how many people would actually want to read about the things she was interested in. I told her something along the lines of what Mike Koralatov wrote the other day in response to my post:
Having a large number of followers is nice, but it doesn’t really tell you very much — especially since following someone on Tumblr is such an easy thing to do.
[…]
What really tells you whether you’re engaging your audience is the number of conversations that your posts generate; when someone takes the time to compose a reply, it shows that you’ve engaged their attention. (Conversely, just because you don’t elicit a response doesn’t mean your post was totally worthless; it just means nobody felt passionately enough about it to respond at length.)
All of this comes down to the perennial quality-versus-quantity issue. That’s not to say that quantity and quality are mutually exclusive, but quantity to the exclusion of quality is a problem. What is more important to you? One thousand Digg users in the midst of a prolonged adolescence that has extended into their early-thirties or someone who you respect and consider one of your first readers?
First, care. Are you really willing to change who you are or what you care about based on some imaginary readers who don’t read the words you haven’t written yet? Care. Write about topics you care intensely about and build conversations with super-smart, likeminded people with great taste in cocktails.
On the issue of platforms, Mike also directed my attention to an excellent point by Richard Gaywood:
To my mind, Tumblr’s most compelling feature, however, is its social feedback loop — the dashboard, the “like”, the replies, the easy reblog, and the notification system that ties those together.
The fact that I heard Mike and Potjie reinforces that fact. Thanks, gentlemen.
