How do blogs work?

How DO blogs work?  I've been asked this by several folk of late, not sure why but maybe they think I have learned something since I seem to keep posting.   Who wants to know?  Well, for starters, all of the entrepreneurs at the Milken conference who were OVER THIRTY-FIVE.  The younger ones seemed to know already (or was it that they didn't yet care?).

And several friends at the Silicon Valley Forum (by the way, this is a group you can join pretty cheaply, and the meetings I've attended to date have been great learning) are sporadically writing something, but getting "no" readership.

How much readership do you get, Charlie?

I stammered....  "well, the best one (HP Phenom) has run for five years and a month, with 164 posts to date, and a couple hundred responses, but 102,000 page views to date.  These days, it runs about 100 page views a day, lighter on the weekend.  Eight people are signed up as followers, so don't know who the rest are.  It did have two short intervals when viewership peaked at about 1,000 per day (guess when those were, around happy CEO turn-overs).  I've met lots of folk at meetings who say, "I loved your post about ... ", folk I'd never met in person.  So it has a 'modest' readership.  I also get emails a lot from folk -- "well, I didn't want to comment OnLine, but have you thought about...?"  Sometimes they have more gratuitous consulting advice to share, with attention-getting words about parentage, et al.

This blog -- InnovaScapes Institute -- is but 9 weeks old.  With 39 posts already, it has but 2 followers (whoop-de-doo), and no comments online to date.  And until a week ago, virtually no readership.  And then, around the U Penn competition and the Milken Foundation, about 100 page views for two posts, and this week, an 'old' post from April 3rd, about "Challenge to America's Workforce" has drawn 400 page views in two days.  Someone must have seen it, liked it, sent it on, and even tweeted about it -- voila!  So now this blog has 'measureable' readership,  We're approaching fourteen hundred page views at the moment, which is about 36 per post on average, not bad for no advertising or promo.  If you pull out the hot three, there's still about 25 per post for the 'duds' and 170 each for the good ones.

I confessed that I have not sought to build an audience so much as using the blog as a place to jot down interesting things for myself and a few friends.  I've had to separate my disparate interests of late, so now there are four different blogs that I scribble in from time to time.  It is clear that people interested in COPD may not be necessarily interested in For-Profit Schools or in Intrapreneuring, so rather than have an eclectic blog, sometimes FOCUS is good.  Didn't they try to teach me that in seventh-grade English?

I know these numbers won't pull Granny off the proverbial pot, but I suspect 'big numbers' happen sort of the same way.  One post or column catches on (e.g. Tom Friedman), and next thing you know, you have half the country mad at you.  Fame and Klout numbers are just measures, maybe not of anything important.

If you have something to say, maybe you too should consider blogging.  My daughter said two of her siblings 'follow' her.  Oh, incidentally, if you want to read the next budding Erma Bombeck, I indeed am impressed by her writing about 'everyday' life.  See http://www.cynthianooney.com for the blog about "Everything I wanted was on Back Order".  Let me know -- no, let her know -- if you like it.