"Help, My Stats are Stuck!" Why a Loyal Following is Better Than a Bigger One

Everyone who is everyone likes numbers, especially high numbers. Let's face it, I much prefer the number 47 to 3, because 47 is bigger, and therefore implies more of something. Sure, in terms of house numbers, that means more walking down the road to actually reach home after a long day in work, but generally, the bigger the number, the more there is, and the better it is. Most of the time.

I watch my statistics pretty regularly. Some might say I check them too often, but a weekly check of Google Analytics and Sumome, a daily check of Squarelovin', and maybe a monhtly check on my Twitter and Pinterest analytics works best for me, it allows me to check out what works, what doesn't, and what can be improved upon or continued into the next period of time.

Sometimes, I like my statistics.
Sometimes, I don't.

Why?

Sometimes, I check them out and find that they haven't changed in the way I would have liked them too, aka, they haven't grown up, matured a little over time. Sometimes, my numbers aren't bigger, and I panic that all my hard work, all the time and effort I'm putting into blogging, promoting, marketing, socialising, it's all, well, one big failed attempt at getting one step further to my goals.

Sometimes, I want to throw in the towel, quit work, catch a flight to nowhere and sulk.
Other times I think to myself: "are you really paying attention to the numbers that actually matter?"

What sounds better to you, 100 people walking into your shop every day, and not a single one of them buying anything, or 100 people walking into your shop every day, 50 of them regulars who always buy something, and always return the following day?

How The Heck Can I Attract a Fresh Audience and Gain New Followers?

There comes a time when every blogger wants something somebody else has. They either want a super awesome design that looks so much better than what they've got, and what they can afford, or they want to have beautiful graphics that just look fabulous on Pinterest, but the most common feature on a bloggers wishlist is an increase in their audience and the people that follow them.

We live in a time when the quantity of people interested in what we have to share dictates our popularity. Statistics and impressions are absolutely huge in terms of creating hierarchy, and through hierarchy comes popularity, and through popularity comes, less popular people with a grudge to bare.

The amount of people following you is not always equivalent to the amount of people who care about what you have to say. Scratching your head yet? Let me tell you story that may well help you out.

Psst, before I do, let me tell you you can highlight any sentence in this post and share it!

Before I waved goodbye to Facebook, at one point, I had over 150 friends that I'd never met in my life. They were 'online' friends, people I opened up to and people I was eager to share my stories, my knowledge, my experiences, my life with, and one day, poof, they vanished off the face of the earth. I later found out I'd been catfished and that all of those 'friends' were actually one person, pretending to be many different people in an effort to get the maximum amount of information out of me.

Why is that life lesson at all related to this post?

Through that experience, I quickly learnt that just because I had those 150 'friends', didn't mean there were 150 people actually interested in what I had to say. Just because I had a number of people surrounding didn't mean I actually had people waiting to hear what I had to share next.


Related: Get Blog Followers From the Right Places

So, back to the topic at hand. We live in a world where our popularity and expert 'name' is held accountable by the amount of people following us, but that's simply not the case. Still, getting fresh eyes upon your content and new followers intrigued by your content is something everybody wants a piece of.

Related: How To Get First-Time Visitors Hooked on your Blog

Attracting a fresh audience to your blog seems like a difficult challenge, but it doesn't have to be. There are some really easy, simple ways to get different sets of eyes on your content. Here's the 3 ways I've managed to gain fresh viewers on Nellie and Co. and a further 10 tried and tested methods proven to get you results.