Don’t check your blog metrics yet

Here’s the latest edition of my newsletter for early-stage growth leaders, Leading Thinker, which I also shared at LinkedIn: TL;DR: When you start a new blog or publication, your metrics will disappoint you. That disappointment leads to doubt, and often kills a content practice before it has a proper chance to make an impact. A more useful signal in the first few months is author satisfaction, and it’s something you can actually pay attention to. I write about content strategy, and I’ve helped companies like Figma, Shopify, and QuickBooks build it. This piece is about an early part that usually gets overlooked: In my first few weeks of high school, my gym teacher took our class outside. Amidst a backdrop of changing fall colors, he paired us off to practice throwing and catching footballs. My partner threw a football that didn’t make it to me. I ran to catch it. It bounced up off the ground at an awkward angle, in the strange way that footballs do, and the sharp end hit me right…