Seth Godin once made a very powerful statement in a blog post.
“My most popular blog posts this year…weren’t my best ones. As usual, the most popular music wasn’t the best recorded this year either. Same for the highest-grossing movies, restaurants and politicians doing fundraising.
“Best” is rarely the same as “popular.” Which means that if you want to keep track of doing your best work, you’re going to have to avoid the distraction of letting the market decide if you’ve done a good job or not.”
I agree 100%. If find it amazingly interesting. I generally consider myself a “software” writer. I like talking about ideas and tactics rather than hardware. But that usually isn’t what my readers click on. This year 40% of the top 10 list consisted of gun and gear articles (despite those articles being only 4% of my article topics).
“Most popular” is a very specific metric. It is an indication of broad or enduring appeal. That appeal may not be the market I’m targeting as future students, but it is a group of people who like what I am writing and are sharing it with their friends.
I am attempting to create enduring content, not just “click bait.” While I write timely pieces, my overarching goal is to create articles that are just as useful as a reference in years to come as they are interesting today. By that metric, I am succeeding. Only one of the top ten articles were actually written in 2022. I wrote some of the others as far back as 2012. Three of the ten also appeared on the Top 10 Most Popular Posts of 2021 article last year. People are digging back and finding useful information. That makes me happy.
So, keeping that in mind that “most popular” doesn’t equal “best,” here were my most popular blog posts (by page views) in 2022.
10. What Do I Say After a Shooting?– 5,552 page views
9. Recognizing the Sound of Gunfire– 5,598 page views
8. An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power– 5,680 page views
7. SWAT Raid or Home Invasion?– 5,952 page views
6. Bad Survival Math: Fail to Recognize Assaultive Behavior + Denial =Throat Cut– 6,181 page views
5. The Springfield XD- A Polemic– 6,185 page views
4. What Happens in a Civilian Gunfight– 6,248 page views
3. Glock Pistols- What Breaks and How to Fix It– 7,130 page views
2. Is the .380 ACP an Adequate Caliber for Defensive Use? – 7, 298 page views
1.Analysis of the Uvalde School Shooting and Implications for the Future– 13, 262 Pageviews
These are the top 10 posts by popularity, but I don’t think they all represented my best work. Stay tuned for next week’s compilation of what I think is my best writing from 2022.
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