Sometimes certain blogs are described as “influential.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about what being influential means and how it can be measured. We could measure this in many different ways, which don’t all necessarily go together:
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The number of people who read your site or your “hit rate.”
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The number of people who read more than one page and then become regular readers.
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Your ability to send your readers to other websites and/or to cause them to want to buy certain products.
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The number of people who link to you in a blogroll.
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How many comments you get.
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How many other bloggers link to specific posts you write and interact with them.
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WHO reads your blog – if the leaders of your field pop by and then take your ideas to influence others, you have a bigger direct influence than someone who is read only by “novices.”
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How much of an impact positively or negatively you have on your readers.
It is that last point that I feel we should most focus on as Christians. You see, we need to be loving towards our readers and leave them with a positive impression. Sure, it’s easier to get a lot of comments with an aggressive “nasty” post, but is it consistent with Christian love? Do we blog in such a way that we follow Lloyd-Jones’ guidelines to “blog the truth in love?”
We are blogging ultimately for an audience of One, who reads everything we say and will hold us accountable for every idle word. (James 3)
For the Christian, one of the challenges of blogging is how to make sure that our motives are right. It is not in itself wrong to want to gather readers – if no one was to read our blogs, they may as well be just stored on our hard drives! But, as I outlined above, and also in my “blogging principles” post, more important issues are at stake for us Christians.
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