Originally Posted by
bthotugigem05
I disagree Adam. The point that was made in the original thread was that a few bad posts were indicative of the overall quality of BoardingArea blogs. While obviously that's in the eye of the beholder, Rene was simply showing that, like most BA blogs, traffic has increased year-over-year for his blog.
As I've said before, there's no reason to believe year over year traffic is an indicator of quality. It doesn't even indicate that people like a blog post. It doesn't matter if a store that has a year over year increase in people walking in the door if they walk in the store and leave as soon as they enter, don't buy anything, and don't return.
What's telling is that Google Analytics does have more useful statistics, but that's not what was trumpeted.
Finally, that someone might like a blog, or even that a lot of people do, isn't a retort to specific criticism, and it certainly isn't a sign of quality. People magazine has more readers than the New Yorker. Does that mean that the writing in People is of higher quality? Of course not. It doesn't mean it's worse, but the readership figure doesn't tell us anything about quality. I think the blogs that have the most readers tend to have the most elementary information that is found on Google and/or other blogs and/or emails from loyalty programs.
Basically, if your response is "There cannot be anything negatively said about my blog because 40% people looked at it than last year," you're just not interested in engaging with the critique. The same goes for this new term "blog bashing board"- it's an excuse to not engage. This forum is no more a blog bashing board than the Hilton forum is a Hilton bashing board or the Delta forum is a Delta bashing board. People post about things they find troubling, wrong, irksome, dishonest, or misleading. When things are going smoothly, there's not much to post. What do you expect this thread to be? People posting "I'm so glad he posted about that promotion today?"
That's not a discussion.
Blogging is a business, even if it isn't generating income. Just like a restaurantowner responding to a Yelp comment, you have three options that don't make you look like a tool: (1) say nothing, (2) graciously give lip service appreciating the feedback but not changing at all, and (3) listening to feedback and taking it to heart. The choice of attacking the customer doesn't make anyone look good.