I called out Steve the other week about being wrong about RSS (and a whole pile of people disagreed with me…) but I’ve got to balance the ledger, so I’ve found something that I couldn’t agree with more: It’s Not About the Traffic.
Writes Steve:
See, anytime a blogger thinks blogging is just about getting more traffic then I really question why they’re in it. I lose my trust in them because I think they’re baiting me (which in this case, Copyblogger did). What’s more, I certainly don’t see any need to establish a closer bond by opting into their feed.
My suggestion is that if you’re blogging solely for building Web traffic and Google Juice, go build a Web site and advertise it on Google instead. Blogs are about being part of a community. Join it, add value to it, but don’t focus on the traffic.
It goes back to sayings such as all good things come to those who wait. There was another saying as well, along the lines of your return is only as good as the work you put in. The work you put in, in blogging terms anyway, includes being part of the community as well. Too many people these days focus on traffic and ignore the other fundamentals of blogging, sure, sometimes you do get a lot of traffic this way, but it’s nothing that will set you up in the longer term.
