Only you can decide how to define your voice. Will you gravitate to the content that is most popular, or will you gravitate to the content you think is most important?
I had Google Analytics (GA) enabled for my last weblog at prefrontal.org. It was exhilarating to see how many people visited, which pages they went to, and where in the world they were coming from. GA was a powerful lens to evaluate the attention of my audience so I could dial in my content. When I saw an uptick in traffic on a post about neuromarketing I kicked out a new longer article that got some nice attention.
I have given up on that approach for this site. I am not going for page views, or clicks. I am thinking more about impact, as I define it.
The charter of this site is to be the resource I wish I had when starting out as a software manager. Having site analytics is not required to achieve that goal. Perhaps it would help, but when using GA it feels like I am no longer writing the articles that I think are most impactful. Instead, I am letting the metrics lead me where they want me to go.
One of my favorite jokes takes that approach to an extreme:
“With enough A/B testing, every website becomes a porn site.”
Having analytics on your site is more-or-less standard these days. I don’t even want to dissuade you from using tools like GA since they can be so empowering. My only advice is to think twice about why you need analytics and whether it is helping you achieve your goals.
Don’t be afraid to turn the analytics off either. You can always turn them back on later – the best kind of two-way door…
Photo: Thousand Steps access path to the beach in Santa Barbara. At high tide it is often a path to nowhere. Fun fact: there are far fewer than 1,000 steps to get to the ocean.