Did you know that most people give up writing a blog after three months? They start off well, type their best ideas avidly, often posting two or even three times a day, but it soon dwindles to once or twice a month. If that.

How many times have you gone to someone’s blog, read it and then checking it realised that it is months or even years out of date?
Good words don’t ‘go off’ like perishable food of course, but occasionally their relevance or their allusions do. Like watching ancient episodes of ‘Have I got news’ on Dave…

A few weeks ago, I was praying about my own blogging habits and wondering whether or not to continue writing. I love spending my time on them and often process much of what God is doing in me as I write, but it does sometimes mean that I have to sacrifice something else. Even short sentences take time, see? Look.

I confess now to being a teensy bit geekoid. I have begun to analyse who reads my stuff. I KNOW that is SO not me is it? It is very odd to me that sometimes I get 27 readers and other times 4. There doesn’t seem to be much of a reason. Some people who read my missive live in Colchester and some in Belize. THAT is interesting because I have never advertised my writing as such. (And certainly not in Colchester OR Belize)

So, I was interested, after praying and talking with God about the future for this little bloglet, to hear from Him that I was meant to continue writing. Not for the masses and multitudes, but for the small number of people who faithfully ‘tune in’ occasionally (or in some cases without fail twice hourly until I post!)

Web traffic is fairly irrelevant to me. What matters most is whether I reach my target audience (which is rather narrow and focused- because it is YOU), not necessarily how many people read my posts. Engaging with my small audience every time I have something to say is much more important to me than being virally spread far and wide.

Some of my forward thinking friends are encouraging me to change my tactics and start tagging and RSS feeding my stuff. Or some such technowizzy horror. But do you know? I rather like reaching out to the one of you in Colchester and the other in Belize, to the person in Franklin, Tennesse, and the other in Stalybridge and a couple in Edinburgh or Maidstone.

I have a feeling in my waters that you rather like that too. Its nice being part of a small group of people who smile with one another knowingly. I have never appealed to a mass market and I don’t really think its who I am.

After all, don’t they say small is beautiful?

Your thoughts are always welcome
emsh@integrityeurope.com