The Silent Majority

I have a routine I like to go through each day when I’m online. It’s not always in the same order, but there are sites I like to check out, just to make sure I know what’s going on. One of the things I almost always do is check in on my blog statistics to see how the previous day fared. Some days, the numbers are surprisingly high or low, and I’ve given up trying to easily predict which posts will get me eyeballs and which will fly under the radar.

(A lot of it rests on the algorithms of the mighty Facebook. If a few people Like and comment on the post soon after it gets put on FB, then it starts to splash it on more feeds. That process can accelerate quickly. If not a lot of people comment on it? It drops off the radar. This is why everyone should make sure my posts are right at the top of their Facebook feeds. ๐Ÿ™‚ ย  )

Something that consistently surprises me, however, is just how many people will tune into a post and read it, but say nothing. I’ve had some pretty controversial posts up on my blog over the years, and some have caused a fair bit of conversation here or on FB. But there are others that people just seem to like to read and say nothing. Yesterday’s post about passport panic is a good example. It got a fair number of hits, mainly (I imagine) because people are interested in reading about stupid mistakes other people make, but are too polite to say exactly what they think about those stupid mistakes.

(Really. People show up for schadenfreude. I’ve got plenty of posts and statistics that will back me up on that.)

Interestingly, sometimes the more provocative “out there” posts also don’t get much in the way of comments. It’s like people know they won’t be able to keep things on the up and up, and so they know better than to engage. Or that could just be me reading into it.

Not that I expect people to always respond to something. There are plenty of posts I read that don’t make me feel the need to say something back. It’s just that sometimes there are posts that get lots of views and little response. That goes against most of my experience, where posts with lots of views get lots of response.

In any case, it’s a busy Wednesday today, and I don’t have time on my lunch break to come up with more thought than this, so this is what you get from me today. I wonder how many people will read it. ๐Ÿ™‚

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