Once again, I have another question for my fellow bloggers. I can’t be the only one with this question, so I ask it not just for myself, but for all bloggers. My hope is we can get a good discussion going. While we might not reach a definitive answer as I don’t think there is one, we might find some common ground and reach a general consensus.
I’ve noticed over the last few months my blog has grown in number of followers. Has this increase lead to an increase in views, likes, or comments per post? The views stat is tricky to measure as WordPress doesn’t keep an accurate count. Views reached by certain methods aren’t counted at all. Comments is also a difficult category to gage. Sometimes you’ll do a review or ask for feedback. You might get a comment. Then again, you might not. People comment randomly, and comments are nice but you shouldn’t expect to get a ton per post usually unless the post is a direct question.
So what about likes per post? I would think that on any post roughly 10% of all followers would read it and click the like button. This isn’t counting random people who discover a post on the WordPress Reader using tags.
Am I getting the rough 10% of my followers reading and liking each post? No, I’m not. Are you? Have you thought about it? Do you care? I’m glad I have people who follow my blog, and I appreciate every person who clicks the follow button. However, I don’t understand following a blog if they aren’t reading more than one post as it appears sometimes. I follow a few blogs, and search through a few different tags at least once a day. I never click the follow button based on one post. If I like the post, I’ll click the like button. I might even leave a comment. I look around the blog to see if the person normally posts stuff I’m interested in reading, and their “About Me” page. Then I’ll decide if I want to follow them. Do I like every post from the blogs I follow? No, but I don’t expect everyone to like each one of mine. This is a question of the number of followers yielding a small percentage of likes, and to a lesser extent, comments per post.
One would think as the follower count grows, so too would the other stats tracked by WordPress. I think there should be a correlation between the two, but I don’t think I’m seeing it. What about the rest of you, my fellow bloggers? Have you noticed anything? What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear them, and I can’t be the only one interested.
Copyright © Drew Martin 2016
Drew Martin Writes 
I’m not sure how long you’ve been blogging—I clicked around on your site and couldn’t find an archive, so not sure if you’re new or have been blogging a while. I’ve been blogging for a bit (nearly six years) and will share my experience:
I think that 10% of followers read your blog number is way too high—it’s probably more like 3 or 4 percent. I have around 1700 followers and a new post gets around 200 views, for 11%. Whether or not those the “viewers” are actually “readers”–I have my doubts. I suspect a lot of my commenters don’t even read the post.
I think a more interesting question regarding followers/readers is this one: do they matter? At what point would you stop blogging in the face of a lack of followers/readers?
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My archives is a drop down menu under the blog header and different categories appear to choose from. This isn’t so much of a question of stop blogging or not. I’m more interested on knowing if the number of subs/followers matters in post stats.
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I rarely look at my blog stats. I am eternally grateful to everyone who follows, pops in for a one time visit, likes, comments and shares, but I don’t watch the numbers. I have the ‘top posts’ widget (visible on the right hand side of my blog) because it’s interesting for me to see which post was the most popular. I blog because I love it! I enjoy writing in all it’s forms and I love to waffle and share my love of books, writing, TV and anything else I can think of. The blogging/writing community is wonderful and I’ve made many friends.
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It is wonderful and you make a good comment. Any view, like, and comment is appreciated. I have no one else to ask about such things, so I feel the best place is the community.
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Same here, Drew. I don’t (or didn’t) know any bloggers in my ‘real’ world but once I started I made many online friends who are only too happy to help. 🙂
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This is a great question. I don’t know if there is much of a link. I feel that WordPress can sometimes arbitrarily track view.
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I know there are certain methods of viewing that aren’t tracked. I’ve had posts not get a single view and still get likes.
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I read this out of curiosity, because I have only just started blogging. I have no experience with this yet, so it’s helpful to read things like this and the comments people have added in order to get something resembling a frame of reference. I thought it was odd to have had 18 visitors to my blog without a single “like” or comment. Perhaps they just didn’t care for my style or content, which is fine. I have been a lifelong writer, but have written only for myself, and had never published any of my work. So as far as I’m concerned, even if no one ever reads my blog, nothing has changed.
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I think if blogging is done right, the majority of your viewers won’t come from your Reader e.g. fellow WordPress bloggers. WordPress is just one source of visitors. Correctly optimising your blog posts to be indexed on Search engines can be a better way to boost your audience numbers. Then of course you have your social feeds, so likes for me are ‘nice-to-haves’ but not necessarily vital to my blogs success. God knows there are enough ‘6 word’ stanza’s blog posts getting hundreds of likes, and shocking one sentence poems that the blogger must have written during a toilet break. So, I don’t equate high likes to quality – in many cases its the opposite.
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Interesting way to look at things. I don’t know any other people who blog in my “real life” so if I have a question this seems to be the best method for getting any kind of feedback and I can get different perspectives. The few comments I’ve received fall in line with what you’ve said. Perhaps I’ve put a bit too much focus on likes. I’d much rather focus on views, but WordPress doesn’t keep an accurate stat on those as there are ways people can view a post and it doesn’t get counted. Thanks for adding to the discussion.
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All Followers tells me is that those people are receiving my post in their Reader or email. It doesn’t tell me if they actually read any of my posts. I view the stats as a general gauge, not extremely accurate, but they do give me a sense of whether anyone reads posts or downloads something from my site. https://gracelead.co
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I read your comment about getting likes but not views. This is something I’ve seen before and someone else has pointed it out. In the WordPress Reader, it’s possible to like a post without actually reading it because the “like” button is visible below the excerpt. This can be frustrating when you want to use likes to gauge your writing, rather than just the fact that you have written something!
I use Jetpack stats alongside Google Analytics and another service to get an idea of engagement, which I guess is what you want to know, in which case comments is the most important figure for you. As Karen said first up though – how much do they matter to you and at one point would lack of followers or engagement stop you from blogging?
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To use the Jetpack and Google Analytics I need to have the paid version correct? This isn’t something I’m familiar with. Do you have any advice or a webpage/blog/youtube reference that could explain?
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Also, thank you for reading and taking the time to comment.
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Sorry, I sometimes forget that I’m self hosted! Jetpack should just be providing me that stats that WordPress.com gives you, so you can ignore that bit! Google Analytics just requires you to put some tracking code in your page and I think there’s a Google Analytics plugin to help with that.
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But I need to do the paid version to use them?
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I’ve been blogging for a number of years across different platforms and content genres, and I can tell you that some views will come from “bots” or “spiders” crawling for data (although WP is FAR better than Blogger about not counting them) and other data mining tools. As far as follows and comments, in the past couple of years the rise of social media and sites like Reddit and Twitter are where people hold the conversations. Kind of a bummer since it splinters up communities across platforms. Although periodically, like in this post, you’ll have a nice conversation going in the comments.
I’ve given up looking at stats, but just take the time to appreciate when someone drops by and comments on my blog. Or if they like a post I check out their writing because like minds tend to gravitate and I’ve discovered some other great writers who happened to simply drop by. Unless you have a specific “conversion” and goal in mind, it’s better to simply enjoy the ride than worry about traffic and likes nowadays.
Great post BTW.
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Thank you for reading the piece and the great comment. I have no else to ask about these thing other than the WP community. So when I think of a question I try to write it out the best I can and hope I get some feedback that will help.
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Blogging is a learning experience for sure, and it has changed quite a bit over the past 7 years, which might as well be a century in “internet time”. I’m finding WP community to be really positive and active compared to some of the other major platforms out there, so I’m glad I moved over here.
Keep up the good work!
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Thank you. I started this on May 21 last year, and while the WP service isn’t the most helpful, the community is.
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It is a strange phenomenon, blogging. I wonder sometimes if the people who followed my blog two year ago are still reading; sometimes they disappear, sometimes they disappear for a while and reappear. I’m not a very consistent blogger these days, so I can understand that. I try not to worry too much about the stats. I’ve met so many awesome people and I’ve come a long way with confidence in my writing. Just keep writing and I will keep reading, you gain and lose followers, you will have days with lots of views and days with few. Ebb and flow. Just keep on writing!
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Thanks. I’ve looked and I still have some of the first people who followed, but never got another like/comment/interaction from them afterward. It is a strange thing. I also wonder if people actually read or click the like button and move on. I may ask that question in the future.
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I’m new to blogging. I’m thrilled that WordPress tracks period. If I want a more comprehensive tracking tool, I suspect one exists for a price.
What I’m chuffed about is when you reach a WordPress milestone, you receive a notification. Kudos if you will. I didn’t realize kudos were included in the package.
I like having Followers, but I prefer Comments. I like to engage. I’ve noticed when I post a few of my followers hit their Like buttons right now. I don’t think they even have to come to the site to do this. Often times, I track my followers down and see what they are up to. Then many will return and spend some time.
As mentioned in another reply here I’m happy to be blogging, interacting, and becoming part of the WordPress community. It was a conscious decision instead of opting for self-hosted. Even though we may not see all the views, I have a feeling we are getting them.
I’m keeping my blog in ship shape just in case!!! For all I know, a change could be coming.
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I like the milestones as well. As far as I know any sort of tracking requires self-hosting or a paid version of WordPress. Comments are a good way to interact and I’ll leave them if I can. Sometimes I read something, like it, but don’t really have anything to say. Thanks for reading and adding to the discussion.
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Just a mention…self-hosting is handled through WP.org, and I did pay a premium along with paid site name.
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