I love stats. At work we use SalesForce.com which has a billion stat tools. It’s a great measurement software, but it can also cause me to move to a place where my day to day does not matter, only getting to the top of the pile does and that’s not how I work best.

This can be true for our blogs too. We have a message, something we know people will benefit from hearing, and we instead get obsessed with the stats page and refresh button. Is this you too?

When I decided to relaunch my blog again, I had a lot of goals. Big out-there goals. But one drove them all. I wanted to grow my platform.

When I sit back and think about that I feel gross. Don’t you? My desire can shift away from an attempt to change lives, grow my writing career, or to be a part of something bigger than myself to a dirty place where I want a quick hit of traffic.

If you are a blogger my guess is that you’ve been side tracked by this too. You want your platform to grow because that is an important piece of the publication puzzle. No problem, I understand. But what about the content you provide? I wonder what the blogosphere would look like if writers put content out there that matter to them or served others rather than themselves?

I apologize if that’s been me. I don’t want to be the quick hit guy who lives on some strange dimly lit corner of the web looking for that bag of 100 followers. I want it to be more valuable to you. I came here to share the joy of words, the thrill of writing a new piece of fiction, and to encourage you to move forward in that direction.

From here on out you get this promise from me, in blood if I could do that on this post. Er, maybe too creepy? But here we go.

I pledge to provide helpful and encouraging content. Not be yet another inauthentic traffic grabbing blogger. I’ll do my best to share what I know for your benefit, not my own.

So here’s to great content that challenges ideas and changes small things, like the world.

Do you find yourself writing for traffic? Or do you provide content that helps?