“My high school reunion is in six months,” the man sighed while looking down at his belly.
“I can’t go looking like this.”
“It’s okay,” said the man’s supportive wife.
“You have a loving family, a great job, and a full head of hair. You should be proud!”
Unconvinced, the man was determined to get back down to his high school weight before the reunion.
He stopped eating. He exercised for six hours every single day. The weight began to come off, but his work suffered. Soon, he lost his job.
“It’s okay,” said the man’s supportive wife.
“You have a loving family and a full head of hair. You should be proud!”
Unconvinced, the man began taking diet pills. He drank a dozen energy drinks every single day so he could stay up late and exercise more. The weight continued to come off, but the stress got to him. Soon, his hair fell out.
“It’s okay,” said the man’s supportive wife.
“You have a loving family. You should be proud!”
The day of the reunion finally arrived.
His car repossessed, the man handed the taxi driver his last $10. His ex-wife no longer around to help him with laundry, the man’s baggy clothes featured a mustard stain on his tie and a missing button from his shirt.
“I did it,” the bald, homeless, frail man thought to himself.
“I can’t believe I did it.”
Focusing on the Wrong Things
Too often, too many of us get caught up chasing things that don’t ultimately matter.
Maybe it’s fame. Maybe it’s wealth. Maybe it’s a magic number on a bathroom weight scale.
For bloggers, it’s usually a metric.
“If I can just reach 10,000 subscribers…”
“If I can just get x-number of Twitter followers…”
Or, my favorite: “If I can get just get more traffic…”
Sadly, most bloggers don’t care where their traffic comes from or how they get it. They just want it.
Understandable, but here’s the reality:
It’s better to have 100 devoted readers than 1,000 visitors who will forget your blog 5 seconds after leaving it.
People who visit your blog but have zero interest in what you do or what you write about won’t help you long term. They won’t visit again, they won’t share your posts on social media, and they won’t buy from you if you ever try to sell an eBook or product.
Exerting any amount of time and resources to bring in such individuals is a horrible use of said time and said resources.
But hey, at least they helped you reach some arbitrary “traffic” metric. Right?
Gaining more traffic, just like losing weight, is a good thing. But it’s how you go about gaining it (or losing it) that’s key.
The man in our fictional story lost sight of that, and it cost him dearly.
As bloggers, we need to be careful not to do the same.
Creative Commons Image via Moyan Brenn.
