Blog Traffic Report | August 2016

Hey, there friends! With another month gone by, it is time for another monthly traffic report! I share my traffic report because I want to share my numbers, and how I use certain social media platforms to drive traffic to my blog. Now, I also want to share that traffic is not the end-all-be-all by any means. You can have lower numbers, but also have a tight-knit community of loyal readers that support you. However, I know that when many are beginning, bloggers are focused on their numbers. I want to share that low numbers does not mean low success!

So, for the month of August, I had a pretty good month! I stuck with my one post a week groove I was in and I definitely liked it. Now, I do feel in the back of my mind that “Lauren, you know you should be posting more often. Come on,” but right now I don’t feel stressed out to put up a blog post. I work on my one post a week, and then my newsletter that goes out on Thursday, and then I can work on other things. This past month, I was working on Build Your Own Blogger Blog. {which you can read about and sign up for here} This upcoming month, I’m not sure what I’ll be working on, but I’m sure it will be great!

This month I had 1,872 users create 1,984 sessions. Of those, I had 2,819 pageviews. That is up about 700 pageviews from July. The bounce rate jumped back up about 3% to 81.60%, which isn’t too bad. This is the first time in awhile that I brushed up to almost 3,000 pageviews for the month.

Twitter

For Twitter, I ended the month with 116,200 impressions, which is down from last month. I also ended the month with 826 followers, which is a gain of 44 followers from the beginning of the month. In the middle of the month, I changed up my Twitter posting strategy AGAIN. I changed it up in two ways, the frequency of posts, and how I scheduled them.

First, I changed the frequency from every half an hour to every hour, and then I only post from 7am to 12am the next morning. So I post every hour, on the hour, for 18 hours. Now I know that sounds like a lot. However, I alternate between my posts and others’ content I want to share. So, for the odd hours, 7am, 9am, 11am, etc. {and also midnight}, I post my blog posts and for the even hours, 8am, 10am, 12pm, etc {except midnight}, I post others’ content that I want to share with my readers. Second, I changed how I scheduled them. Remember last month I said that I changed from Buffer only to Buffer and Hootsuite, but I still had to schedule them in Hootsuite. Well, now my Twitter is 100% automated {my Facebook is too!}. In one of my recent posts, I shared a tutorial that I found on a fellow blogger’s blog on how to use Google Calendar and IFTTT to automate your social media.

Pinterest

For Pinterest, I ended August with 84,676 impressions and 44,869 viewers, which is up on both from last month. It is the highest impressions I’ve had since May! I also ended the month with 733 followers, which is up 37 followers from the beginning of the month.

I also ended the month with an average of 66,766 monthly viewers and an average of 2,533 monthly engaged people. I decided to start tracking this metric because this shows the people I reach. The impressions/viewers metric that I’ve been sharing is just my profile. I wanted to start to be able to track both now and share that with you.

When it comes to what I’ve done with Pinterest, I mostly just make sure that I go on at least once a day, and pin some content. What I usually do is pin content onto my boards, and then I will go back through my boards and pin the pins onto group boards. I do it this way because a lot of the pins that I pin, I want to read later. So, I pin them on to my own boards so they will be easier to find.

Right now, Pinterest is my biggest referrer of traffic from social channels. I’m really trying to capitalize on that and get good, quality traffic to my site. I’m also trying to increase the amount of traffic I get from Pinterest. I just took Melyssa Griffin’s Triple Your Traffic Challenge, and I can’t wait to share the results! It’s seven days of actionable things to do to boost your traffic! You can sign up yourself, enrollment closes September 13th, so sign up now!!!

Instagram

To be honest, I haven’t really posted to Instagram this month. I think I posted one quote, but then I just didn’t keep up with it. That being said, I ended the month with 183 followers, up a bit from last month. Personally, with where I am right now, I think Pinterest and Twitter are the two platforms I really enjoy using and really engage with. Like I mentioned last month, I’m usually pretty inconsistent with Instagram, but that is because I can’t take the beautiful flat-lay pictures and I don’t just want to share my blog posts and generic stock photography. So, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with Instagram after this. We’ll see.

Email Subscribers

So, since I have been consistently sending out weekly emails for more than a month now, I want to start sharing my email list. When you’re trying to turn your blog into a business, your email list is so crucial. Now, I’m not saying that if it’s small right now, it’s useless. Oh no my friend, just the opposite. Your email list, no matter how small, is crucial! That being said, I ended August with 83 people on my main Creatively Lauren list! My list has been slowly growing over the last couple of months. Right now, my email service provider is MailerLite. I really enjoy it. Right now I have a free account, which includes 1,000 subscribers, landing pages, pop-ups, automation {yup! Even automation}, and other awesome features. I’m really enjoying its simplicity right now. The one downside is that they don’t have much integration with other apps like MailChimp and ConvertKit have, so that is something to consider. However, if you just want to grow your list right now and can do without the extra integration, MailerLite is a good option.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s traffic report! Are you a blogger and do you have a traffic report? Let me know! I always love seeing the success of others!