Do blog stats even matter anymore?

As a first and foremost Blogger, my blog itself is the most important part of my 'brand'. From redesigning, 45mm buying, and personal writing, each bit of the blog has to represent what I want to portray. Bloggers work tirelessly on their posts, to promote them, photograph them, and for a only a handful of people to bother reading. The more you do it, the more you realise how little it matters what you actually write, but who you are. I know people with 15k on insta who write like a 5 year old. I know people with 500 followers whose writing is funny and personal and makes you want to read more. 

Since working with a brand a few months ago, my blog statistics have gone up 100 times over. With one post reaching 170k recently, I wondered why brands seem to care more about the 'follower' numbers on social media, than what numbers bloggers are actually getting on the thing that started their journey, their BLOG. 

I popped up an insta poll recently where I found that those who write blogs themselves, read posts, whereas non-bloggers do not. 76% of voters agree that those that do not have a blog, should not be calling themselves a blogger. 15% have never recommended a blog post to a friend, and ultimately only 75% agree that blog stats are as important as social media following. Nearly all of these were bloggers. On a side note, I was actually surprised with some who voted in the way they did. Nethertheless, being within the blogging community is fab and all, reading each other's posts, being inspired etc. But to the outside world, does what we write really matter or or are we writing to ourselves?

I've come to the point where I'm sending out screenshots along with my media kit, of my monthly analytics in a bid to prove that just because some of us don't have excess of thousands of followers, there ARE people that want to read what we have to say. There ARE people that buy off of our recommendations and DO follow us, even if there isn't a public number to show for it. 

*Poll- 40 voters, including bloggers, instagrammers and non influencers.