Marketing Dopamine • October 8, 2026

Counting Conversations

For a long time, I measured my marketing in posts. How many went out. How many people saw them. How many people liked them.
Those numbers are easy to track, and they are not meaningless. They tell you whether you are visible.
They do not tell you whether you are building anything.
So I have started counting something else.

Not how many posts I published, but how many real conversations I had.

A conversation is harder to measure. It might be a thoughtful exchange in the comments, a direct message that turns into a call, or someone mentioning that a post stayed with them. None of it shows up neatly on a dashboard.
But conversations are where trust becomes visible. They are the moment a reader stops being part of an audience and starts being a person you know. Every client relationship I value began with one, not with a view count.
Changing the metric changes the behavior. When I count posts, I focus on publishing. When I count conversations, I focus on the people on the other side of the screen, which is where my attention belonged all along.

What you measure decides what you chase.

Visibility will always matter. It is just the doorway. The conversation is the room.
Lisa Carmichael is the author of The Marketing Dopamine Workbook: From Awareness to Action, available now, a companion to her book Marketing Dopamine: What Your Brain Is Really Doing When You Think You’re Building a Business, coming soon. Learn more at marketingdopamine.com