Heather has a specific job at Microsoft - and her blog helps her do that job (which is not to do recruiting). Another Microsoft blogger, without high traffic, might bring in more candidates. Does that mean that Heather is more important than an employment blogger who brings in three great people a year?
Whose to say?
Most important - who exactly do we turn to for blog metrics? I wrote a post yesterday citing this very problem, and it quotes a ClickZ article speaking to Henry Copeland, the CEO of Blogads.
"Most ofthe stuff that goes on in blogs is currently unmeasurable...which is tosay the buzziness of it," he said. "We started doing this because wethink blogs are uniquely influential. In the long run, if bloggers aregoing to get premium value for their ads, you want to move beyond a CPCor even a CPA environment. You want your media buyers to understandthat something sold to an influential is better than something sold tosome guy in Wooster, Ohio (which I can pick on because it's myhometown.)"
If Henry Copeland can't figure it out yet, who has? Metrics can be important when you are selling a product - and yes, most things can be improved by measuring performance - but in some instances, measuring performance gets in the way of simply doing a job. Blogging is one of those instances.
Here's an example: There are bloggers who drive traffic to their sites posting pictures of naked women. Heather doesn't do that - even though it would raise traffic. Neither does John. Presumably, this is because the traffic is not as important as their dignity. They have reasons for posting that are completely separate from the need to increase performance. How do you measure that? I guess you could say that the pictures would drive the wrong people to the site, and the right people away - but are there studies done to prove this? Of course not.
It is assumed. It is a human being making a judgement for reasons not easily measured. And that is at the core of Heather's blogging. She does it because it makes her better at her job, and people seem to like it. Trying to measure that is like trying to program salespeople to be more likable. It almost always fails, and no one knows why. It's the beauty of the human condition.
And this is where John fails. He confuses the importance of numbers with the importance of people, even though his numbers don't accurately reflect his own influence. In the end, he treated Heather, not as a person with feelings, but as just another object in a study.
As for his attacks - well - he is in the blogosphere. People make mistakes. He has the ability to correct his mistake and apologize.
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