The Reader Appreciation Project

When have you started blogging? Yesterday? One year ago? Longer than you remember? It doesn’t matter. Everybody knows you are concerned with your readers’ satisfaction. Your blog is a mirror of your concern:

• You balance paid reviews with useful posts, trying to bring more vitality to your writing;
• You answer your readers’ questions the best way you can;
• You write compelling “Thank You” letters to your readers, sharing your results made possible through them;
• Taking example from the bees, you cross-polinate social media viral seeds;
• You celebrate your blog’s anniversary by giving away awesome graphic design awards, or you launch great birthday bash competitions with $54000 worth of prizes;
• You get out of your comfort zone and take risks to offer your readers an enhanced experience;
• You think like a gardner: “don’t ignore it, or it will die”, be it a post, a comment, or a contact.
• Sometimes, from too much reader love, you make your fellow bloggers hate you.

At the end of the day, here you sit, tired yet happy, still under the effect of the adrenaline rush that gave you the strength to do all those beautiful things for your readers’ satisfaction. But how do you know when you get there? How do you measure the satisfaction of so many (or so few?) people, out of whom, maybe 0.5% leave a comment on your blog?

You gather lots of figures: feedcount, bounce rate, pages per visit, visitor loyalty, or visitor recency. Which of them gives you the measure of your success?