Month 1: January Blog Growth Report – From 949 To 2108 Pageviews In One Month
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Welcome back to the blog growth report series! I’m excited to see you here.
January was the very first month when I took blogging seriously. Finally! Honestly, it’s been great to have some routine, strategy, and goals to focus on. Even though I’m still not where I’d like to be, but I can surely say that I finally started making some progress towards my goals. My traffic grew, I started writing consistently and publishing new blog posts.
In this blog post, I’m going to share with you all my analytics, similar to what I did last month. I know my numbers are still low, but I want to show you how beginnings usually look like that and hold myself accountable. Let’s dive in!
Navigate to where you want to go:
Analytics & social media report
Google Analytics
Wow. I don’t know what happened there, but I’ll take it. I hope this trend won’t change – it would be awesome to double my blog traffic every month! I believe it might be related to the fact that the Christmas season is over and people spend more time online again. Who knows, though?
In January, I had 2108 page views. Over twice as much as in December! I’m amazed. When I started this blog, I would never imagine that 29-67 people would read my posts every day. Because that’s how many of you came here every day in January. Thank you all, truly!
I just realised that I don’t even know that many people in real life. That’s crazy.
Bounce rate went slightly down when compared to the month before, but I don’t think interlinking posts helped in any way. I should focus more on that and add links to my older posts, too.
Organic search is still my primary way of acquiring new readers, but I can’t forget to mention that the Social category went up from 9 to 31. I started focusing more on Pinterest and it paid off.
Pinterest Analytics
Well, hello there, Pinterest. I still don’t like you.
Pinterest overwhelms me. I started creating pins every couple of days and it’s such a tedious job. I just keep hoping that I don’t waste my time for nothing. Creating and scheduling 10 pins takes me about 90 minutes, which is a lot. I use Tailwind and just started pinning the same pins to multiple boards, which hopefully won’t backfire. Pinterest likes new pins right now, after all.
In January, my Total audience was 2.5 times higher than in December. I went from 424 to over 1,000 which is amazing! I haven’t been checking my analytics often and when I’m writing it, I’m seeing the monthly summary for the first time. And trust me, I’m so, so happy! More people are engaged with my pins too.
30 Outbound clicks, can you believe it?! Last month I had less than a quarter of that, just a mere 7! I’m glad to see that more people went to my website from Pinterest. Once I created more pins, I’ll have to spend some time going through all the analytics and checking which ones bring the most traffic to create the most appealing ones to the audience.
There’s one more thing I want to share with you this time. Tailwind Profile Performance. As you can see, I started pinning a lot in January. I revamped my entire Pinterest account and started pinning third party content to help Pinterest learn what my boards are about. Since I haven’t created many pins, I want to keep pinning anything relevant to keep my account active in a way. I noticed that since I started doing that regularly, my old pins started getting more engagement and most of the Outbound clicks actually came from them.
PIN FOR LATER!
Instagram Insights
Here’s the deal – I don’t think I still want to focus on Instagram as heavily as I planned. I don’t know if I want to focus on it at all.
One goal I set last month was to grow my following to 10k. Yes, I’m aware of it. But as I mentioned in my January recap, I realised it doesn’t actually align with my vision. I wanted to start my own business to have more freedom and all that comes to my mind when I’m thinking about of Instagram is lack of privacy, hours spent creating content, and stressing about the algorithm.
RELATED:
What Failed Social Media Detox Taught Me: Setting Social Media Boundaries Is Important
I know what you might say – you can post on IG and set boundaries to protect your privacy. There’s something about it, though, that makes me subconsciously anxious. You should post often, be active on Stories multiple times of the day, but what if I want to go out somewhere? Or go on a holiday? Creating IG content in advance doesn’t feel authentic, and even though I can see how helpful it could be in such scenarios, I don’t feel comfortable with it. And letting the entire world know that I’m off to somewhere doesn’t feel safe to me.
I don’t think I’ll be able to come back to Instagram until I figure out the exact way I want to use it and I’ll be 100% sure it won’t worsen my anxiety.
Posts published in January
For the very first time, I was successful in not only posting regularly throughout the entire month, but publishing new posts twice a week. That was my goal when I started this blog and it took me almost two years to finally achieve it.
New blog posts have been coming out on Tuesdays and Fridays. I had only three mishaps when I didn’t schedule post in advance and kept working on it past the time when it was supposed to be published. They still went live on the days when they were supposed to, so that’s not a big deal. I’ll work on it for sure.
January strategies & goals
Publish 2-3 blog posts a week
Done, done, done. 4 posts out of 8 were written with a specific keyword in mind and optimised for it. Yup, that means that I wrote half of the posts not bothering about ranking in Google. Why, you might ask?
That’s because I’m changing my strategy a bit. I want to share more authentic, relatable content that’s not always written just to bring more traffic to my website. I want to share with you some bits and pieces from my daily life even if there are no keywords they might rank for. For example, monthly recap and blog growth report. There’s no way to make those articles rank in Google, and that’s okay.
My December recap went live a bit later than I wanted. Then, there was a 2022 year review and goals for 2023, my first blog growth report, and another monthly recap, this time for January. I’ve never planned to share so many recaps and reviews in one month, but somehow it happened anyway. Another thing to keep in mind in the future, when creating my content calendar.
Figure out how Tailwind works and join 10-20 Communities
Done. I joined 13 communities, but I struggled a lot with finding active ones that would be suitable for my niche (or niches?). I’m in 4 communities where I’ve received no re-shares, so I’ll need to spend more time on finding new ones.
Create 1-2 pins for each blog post and pin consistently
Creating pins turned out to be trickier than I expected. I won’t lie to you. Tailwind has been a huge lifesaver, although I’m not sure how I feel about creating pins inside their software instead of using Canva.
Being able to schedule posts in advance definitely helps in pinning regularly. I didn’t create 1-2 for each blog post as I wanted to, but I created around 30 pins for a few latest articles. I consider it as a small win.
Add Instagram Stories every day
Well, how to say that… I was sharing stories almost every day for a week or two, but then I just got fed up. It definitely didn’t work out the way I wanted, but that’s okay. Instagram isn’t my priority right now.
Start thinking about creating a challenge and blog post series
Done. I drafted a challenge, although I’m still going back and forth trying to decide if I should post it.
As for blog series, I came up with a few ideas. One of them, the How to start a blog series, is all outlined and ready to be drafted. Awesome!
Strategies & goals for February
Keep posting 2-3 times a week
I’m curious how long I’ll be able to post this often, but publishing new blog posts 2-3 times a week stays as a goal for this month as well. Writing every day has been a pleasure and a great adventure. I’m going to do it for as long as I can. Hopefully, it will also help me grow faster.
Create a blog post series to be published in March
This is ambitious, seeing that I want to continue writing 2-3 blog posts every week. I have one blog post series outlined and ready to be written, so I believe I’ll do it on time. All that’s left is brainstorming freebie ideas and maybe some paid products that would go with it.
Create 10-15 pins for each blog post published this year so far
Ambitious, ambitious. I’ve started creating 10 pins a day already, and it’s been a tedious job. My Impressions on Pinterest grew a bit, so it looks like pinning regularly works. I’ve published just 50 blog posts so far, so at this rate, I should be done with creating pins for them in less than two months.
Schedule 10 pins a day using Tailwind
I’ve already started scheduling 10 pins a day although I still haven’t created enough pins to stop sharing third party ones. If I create 10-15 pins every day as I want to, I should be able to share just my own soon enough.
Create first digital product
Well.. I think I’ve already done it. I really wanted to create a digital planning page for my own use, which I actually finished last week. My plan was to add it to my Etsy shop once I tested it out and made sure that it looks exactly the way I want it to look. After doing some keyword research, I’m not sure if it makes any sense to do so. I think I might need to create a bit more products before I re-open my Etsy shop.
PIN FOR LATER!
Final words
So, there it is. My detail analysis after the first month of taking blogging seriously. I hope that this blog growth report will inspire you to start your own blog and create your own strategy to achieve all your goals.
I know my statistics aren’t spectacular. Nobody’s are at the beginning. And yes, I’m saying that I’m at the beginning of my journey although I’ve been blogging for almost two years! There’s nothing wrong with it.
Don’t let your past dictate your future. Believe in yourself, trust the process, and just keep going!
See you soon x
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