I was going to tweet this yesterday:
“Page views are less important to me than relationships.”
It would have been a great tweet.
It came to me when I was with a bunch of people at Sharehouse ( where Nancy works). I had been shooting some video of the people working. I said “I won’t embarrass anyone with this video. It won’t be going on YouTube. Page vies are less important to me than relationships.”
Most of them probably don’t know what page views are. Maybe you don’t either. Simply, each time someone looks at a webpage, that’s a view. It’s one way of measuring success on the internet. Often, the sillier or the more embarrassing something is, the more views it gets. It’s the same principle that keeps “America’s Funniest Home Videos” going.
I could make videos that make people look silly. And people might watch them. But I care too much about people to take advantage of videoing them for laughs.
So why didn’t I tweet that statement?
Because it wasn’t completely accurate. I do care about views. I check the statistics. I get excited when there is a lot of traffic on one of my posts (a lot for me).
I guess that there isn’t anything wrong with measuring.
What I really want to focus on, though, is not how much exposure I can get but on whether I am helping a handful of people learn and grow. Looking for the one sheep. Listening to the person in front of me. Helping answer the questions I already have from the people I already know.
I think it’s rooted in Jesus’ command. He didn’t say “get lots of traffic.” He said “love each other.”
So here’s the new statement: I want to care more about relationships than page views.
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Diane Brogan
I consider myself to be great photographer. I never show or post unsatisfactory pictures of people. The photo may bring a smile, but the relationship is always more important.
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Frank Reed
Great words to consider in a day and age where quantity trumps quality in so many areas of our lives. If we truly start to ‘commoditize’ real relationships the one who gets hurt the most is ourself. Page views come cheap but relationships come with a great price. It’s usually a price worth paying.
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Cheryl Smith
I want to care more about helping people understand their purpose/faith (as it relates to family, work and social media) than about the number of comments people make. Might need to refine that more… story of my life!
I’ll be pondering throughout the day.
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Caryn
“I could make videos that make people look silly. And people might watch them. But I care too much about people to take advantage of videoing them for laughs.”
Trying to get this across to teenagers is really difficult. They seem to have a totally different set of rules. I suppose that’s always been the case. But I know they experience embarrassment and hurt feelings about some of that stuff that gets posted. Everyone draws lines in different places. Who gets to decide what’s funny? I say err on the side of caution. Maybe they haven’t learned the value of relationships the way “older people” have. hmmmmm…
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Mimi Meredith
The very best is when a page view leads to a relationship!I love being able to connect with those who leave comments or email me, and I think it’s fascinating to watch relationships grow between people who visit the blog who have no other connection to one another. If my blog ever gets as big as my ego would like it to be, those benefits would be less likely.
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Joseph Ruiz
Measurement is important because it is an indicator of what we are doing it’s a way to determine if we are going in the direction we intended. The problem i have is I can allow measurement to become an idol. I was talking to a young lady who is in college this weekend. She was evaluating her progress based almost entirely on getting an A that was the conversation not what she was learning. I do the same thing. I like your example of allowing values to trump measurement. We want page views that hasn’t changed we just don’t want them at any cost, in fact what we want is to measure relationships and value those then somehow i think the other measures will fall into place.
Great topic thanks for sharing
Grace & Peace
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Rich Dixon
Read something the other day: There are two kinds of Twitter users–those who want more followers and those who lie about not wanting more followers.
I wanted to get self-righteous and say I really don’t care, but it’s a lie. I do care.
It’s WHY we care that matters. If more page views means more opportunity to serve, we should care a lot. And we’re called to be responsible stewards, so we should care that we’re being effective.
Like you said, it’s priorities. Traffic matters–it’s just not the #1 priority.
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Jon Swanson
You are all so cool. I love how you talk among yourselves.
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rbee
In Luke 15 the son who goes to the far place “comes to his senses” and goes home (the third part of the sick of home, homesick,home, can you relate?).Interesting because he was motivated by his tummy and yet when his father lavishes grace on him in restored relationship the core part of coming to one’s senses is the realization that its more about the genuine relating to the once considered “your dead to me” father than about the temporary externals. That’s the”view” from here…..
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