Why You Shouldn’t Care About Your Visitors

You are often told to listen to your readers, the people who are helping you succeed, but rarely do blog authors do this. If they did, they would quit blogging, and go onto do something that they aren’t forced to change due to a relatively small group of people.

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You are the only author and the sole owner of your blog (unless you are blogging for someone else or within a network). It is up to you to create a successful blog – without the help of anyone else. Sure, promotion will help in this process by your readers, but this shouldn’t be relied on to meet your goals.

Comments are enabled on most blogs to create a community of people who share similar interests, and this allows open communication between people. These people may be extremely opinionated, and they may not leave a comment when they are in the best of moods.

For example, an author from another blog may write a nasty comment on your blog after dealing with hundreds of emails. Their comment may be demeaning, you will read it, and have some decision to make.

Approving the Comment

The best approach to take in this event is to approve the comment, posting it to your blog. Even though it may attack you, it’ll show that you allow an open conversation. If it is really “wrong” in language, or attacks your other visitors, it might be best to just keep it unapproved.

Dealing with the Comment

Taking comments personally isn’t going to get you anywhere. If I listened to all comments, I would have shut my blogs down years ago. Writing for a blog comes with some responsibility and understanding on your end. Don’t let individual comments bother you. Likewise, just because a post may not receive a comment doesn’t mean that your blog isn’t successful and that people aren’t reading your content.

Readers’ Advice isn’t Correct

While you can certainly take some feedback into perspective, keep in mind that everyone on the Internet is competing for traffic. Although bloggers certainly understand that there are so many blogs traffic can bring in results no matter how large your blog is, some of your readers might not.

Posting new content shouldn’t necessarily be tailored to what you readers expect, but what you want them to see. If you can start a new trend, start one! Visitors will respond to your methods by promoting your content through Twitter and other methods.

If you want to let your readers tell you what they think about your blog, that is completely up to you. But never take the individual advice of your readers seriously, or you’ll be changing your blog’s design, focus, and style every ten minutes.