Start By Not Giving A Crap, All At Once

My obsession with instant gratification, followers, likes, retweets, mentions, etc. began in earnest when I was in high school. This was when Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr were starting to take off and the thirst for popularity began. Every day I whipped up a few painfully cringeworthy sentences, slapped some emojis at the end, and spammed it up and down with irrelevant hashtags.

This was primarily a Facebook endeavour, considering Twitter was nowhere near my radar just yet. To be honest, I wasn’t the only one that didn’t care much for writing 140 characters or less, but I digress.

If the globe icon in the top right corner didn’t have a shiny red dot next to it by the end of the day, a sort of sickening remorse took over me. Sad, right? I needed that instant “like” to clarify that I am just as witty as Sally and Johnny from my Algebra I class. I mean, they got at least 5–10 likes per post. Why can’t I be as cool as them? The popularity contest that embodies every high school culture was now entering the student’s home. Great!

Readers Don’t Care About How Many Likes You Have

I quickly realised that the only reason why my silly, weird, thoughtful posts weren’t getting any hype was because Sally and Johnny were calling out ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, picking fights with kids, and generally stirring up drama publicly. Let’s be honest, that’s what the people want. Readers want substance that will get them excited, scared, sad, mad and all the rest. They’re not worried about how popular you are; they just want to read and share stuff that is good. Of course, online bullying and gossiping is a bad example, but you get my point.

Sometimes I’m surprised to find a great written article coming from a blogger who has only 100 followers on Twitter. There’s something disturbing about how shocking I find this. I almost feel like a hero for retweeting their article. As if I, little old me, just made this small time writer’s day a whole lot brighter when, in reality, they’re probably 10x better at writing than I could ever be.

I’m Finished Obsessing Over Readership

The point I’m trying to make is this, as a blogger I have gone through a stage that I do not like to admit. I cared way too much about how many Twitter followers I had, how many readers visited my blog, and what kind of comments were passing through my pages. I’m finished obsessing.

I’m only worried about my content and my content alone. My target audience is already set in stone and my niche is in place. The readers will come in time. Worrying about why people are unfollowing me or leaving negative blog comments is unhealthy because the positive always outweigh the negative. In order to leave my obsessing behind for good, the next couple of months is going to be distraction free. I’ll still be on social media, but I’ll be sure to focus primarily on my content and not to waste time in places that are only playing with my confidence.

I want to keep my ego level and my motivation high. Occasional criticism is great, but the trolls are getting me down. My motto for these next couple of months is to just write. Really, that’s it. Just write your blog posts, Sarah, and reach out to like-minded people. Give positive feedback and soon, hopefully, the favor will be returned.