The Losing Readers Mentality – Survival of the Most Loyal?

This week I read a disturbing article by a blogger that I respect. The article discussed losing readers over an article that was published. The conclusion of the article stated that if a reader unsubscribed over one post, the reader wasn’t that loyal to begin with.

What if that one post was the one straw that broke the camel’s back? What if it exposed a blogger for who he/she really is? What if the reader was tired of the content, and finally the one post motivated the reader to go the effort and unsubscribe?

Losing Readers is Not Okay

Losing readers is a fact of life, just like losing customers in retail is a fact of life. However, acknowledging the loss of readers and rationalizing the loss over non-loyalty is a slap in the face of all readers with half a brain

A Papa John’s Analogy

I was in Six Flags in Atlanta, Georgia in line for Papa John’s pizza. Papa John’s was a brand I recognized and knew I would somewhat enjoy. However, as I approached the front of the line, I could hear two co-workers talking about how there are too many customers.

“Why don’t they just go away? There are dozens of other places to eat?”

My jaw dropped. Having worked in customer service for so long, I found it preposterous that someone who was a face to the customer had such a negative view on their business. The rational was that they (Papa John’s) already had too many customers. The “extra” customers were an inconvenience.

Losing Customers

If I were to apply the blogging mentality of losing readers to retail, then a business would be okay with losing customers as long as it was gaining more than it was losing. The theory would be that the customers who stayed were the most loyal.

However, look at AOL customers. For a while, AOL was completely fine with its bad business practices as long as it continued to have customers. Now that AOL has lost a lot of their customer base, are the remaining customers the most loyal? Or could we call them something else?

Losing Readers

Bloggers can and will lose readers, even with one post. However, it is simply irresponsible to imply that the readers who jumped ship were the least loyal and that the post in question shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did. The point is, the post did matter, and a potentially long-standing reader abandoned ship because a post (and the follow-up post) displayed the attitude the blogger displays for the individual reader.

Conclusion

In retail, all customers should be treated as the returning customer — the loyal customer. We who work the counter are the faces of our business.

For a blog, there is typically only one face, and if the blogger snubs his face at one reader, there are literally a million other places to go. Why should a reader show loyalty when the blogger shows none in return?