Shameless Self-Promotion

From time to time I check the stats on my blog to see if anybody actually reads this drivel that I write. Lately, the number of readers that stop by has dropped to the faithful few that either feel a mutual obligation (I read their blogs so they read mine), or those that haven't taken the time to drop me from their subscription lists.

These days, I post links to my blog on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn, but since I run pretty much the same circle of friends on each, I doubt that there is much of an impact on overall hits.

So I am wondering what may have caused the drop in readership. The first thing that comes to mind is my irregular posting habits. Yeah, apparently if you don't post anything for a month or so, people tend to quit checking on you.

Then I started wondering about the content of my posts.

I went back almost a year, reading my posts and comments. I've managed to clean up the political stuff and haven't been overly offensive or controversial in some time. I'm not sure if I lost some people by writing the more controversial stuff or by not writing it. Or it could just be that more of my posts of the past year have been to do with religion, Christianity (both positive and negative stuff), or just more things of my personal life.  Maybe there is more controversy in my religious posts than I realize, or maybe it's just not the kind of thing that people want to read about.

Since I started this blog (almost 6 years ago) for the purpose of writing and never expected anybody to really read it, I guess it doesn't really matter. But today, I also use the blog as a means of sharing my work and ministry, so I guess it does matter if people are reading--and it matters what I'm writing, as well.

I've never really been into the whole self-promotion thing. Most of my new exposure simply comes by word of mouth. At the risk of appearing to be shamelessly promoting myself, I'm just going to ask those of you that have used me in the past (and been pleased with my service) to share that with your ministry friends or school administrators. I'm also going to ask that you consider using me again, perhaps in a different way. If you have seen me at a camp, perhaps you'd consider me for a church event or revival. If you had me to preach at your church, perhaps you'd think about sponsoring a public school event or a youth rally. You may even consider writing a brief endorsement that I could use in a brochure or on one of my profile pages.

And if there has been an issue that is keeping you from using me, I would hope that you would contact me about it.

I've often said that I'm as busy as I care to be. There are those demands of work and personal life that scream for attention. But I also wonder just how busy I could be. I wonder if I'm cheating God by saying that I'm busy enough. I wonder if I'm just being lazy about taking care of things that need to be taken care of and I've let my poor habits dictate how much ministry work I can do. Maybe I've already decided that I can only do so much ministry work before I tell God that's all I can handle.

Maybe I need to re-examine our church motto for the year as it applies to my personal life.

Anything.
Anytime.
Anywhere.
At any cost.

John <><