Here is a short little blog entry…(I hear the collective sigh of relief)…

I love writing this blog…every so often I feel like I am going to run out of ideas… And I panic gently… But then something amusing, convoluted or annoying happens or something vaguely profound or interesting occurs to me and off I go again.

I said at the outset that I am not that interested in an audience as such…just a way to express these thoughts. And an outlet for my creative side, that part of me that finds life amusing or down right irritating.

But then there is this little button on WordPress….it’s called Stats.

I know I have also mentioned before my fondness for mathematics. I especially liked Statistics, rolling dice, picking cards, randomness or lack there of, chi squared analysis etc etc.

And so I find the lure of the little button almost overwhelming.

Not only does it tell me how many people have read that day’s entry. It also tells me where they found me from, what other past blog entries they may have read that day, presumably therefore indicating a new visitor or an infrequent one (how dare they), and also if they shared it on. Really very, very excitingly it tells me whereabouts in the world they come from…with a map…Qatar… anyone?

Once when many of my regular readers kindly shared my Rant Alert and Rant Alert Update about LLP more widely than they may have otherwise (if this is new to you please do look it up…and boost my viewing figures in the process) I actually got a kind of award from WordPress as those viewing figures got so high….in fact the whole scale of my y axis had to change… I felt slightly proud….it’s a long time since I won any kind of award…(yep it’s sad I know….feel free to share away again!)

And although I could ignore the button I do not. The lure is strong especially as it is backed up by this incentive plan run by my host which fires off further gratification at intervals.

Not just content with reading the data my brain is now going off in random directions over analysing the stats provided. For instance I have noticed that blog posts shared on Saturday mornings do badly. Similarly Fridays are extremely poor for garnering an audience. Everyone is, I assume, busy and so misses my Facebook share (where the majority of my viewers come from). Or maybe traffic on Facebook is heavier and so my post slips down someone’s wall as if it were painted with anti climb paint.

On the flip side to that quite a few people read my posts on the following day…usually from Facebook…I am not going to speculate on the sparseness of their walls, or maybe they have read it via a new share that someone has done on their Facebook wall…stop me if I am loosing you…

Interestingly it makes not a jot of difference if the post is humorous or not, I thought it might. I assumed people would prefer funny anecdotes to my ramblings about life, the universe and everything.  Maybe I just disguise them well, after all that little button is not clever enough to tell me if each person read to the end of my entry or gave up half way in disgust or, even worse, apathy (I am now worrying gently)…

So now I find myself scheduling future posts carefully. (I normally have about two to three posts already written at one time… So you can rest assured that I did not write today’s entry today). Planning when to publish to obtain maximum ‘clicks’. When I promised myself I would not care.

So here you have it. I do care. A bit. But if you all stopped reading would I care enough to stop. Probably not.

Footnote….and no I cannot click on my own blog entry to artificially inflate my stats. I am offended that you even think I may try such a tactic…