I have always loved numbers. And as Peter Jones said on BBS 1’s Dragon’s Den, a good entrepreneur looks at their numbers every day. You do need to know what’s working and what’s not. And you need to identify niggly issues before they become serious problems. Since I have been doing my 365 blog challenge, I have been looking at my website statistics, daily, and it has been very interesting.
Aim of my 365 blog challenge
I decided to push myself in 2022. I love writing and I have so much content on my external hard drive and in boxes in my study. Putting all this content on my website was my way of decluttering. I would be putting content on paper and in files, onto my website.
I also wanted to rekindle my love of blogging. And get back into writing every day, which had dropped to once every 2-3 days. This was just not good enough for me. I know that the more I write, the better my writing. Looking back at the blog posts I wrote when I first started blogging in 2004, I am really surprised. My writing has evolved and I have grown.
And, I wanted to see if I really could increase my website traffic with loads of regular content.
Putting my content out there
Every blog post has a cover image, which I make using a template on Canva. I then make the same image, but as a square to use to promote the blog post on Instagram. This doesn’t take very long, but it is still an action that is part of the blogging process.
I post the link to the blog post on my Dawn A Denton Facebook page, which I use for my writing, mostly. And I copy the post and post it, without the link, onto my Dawn A Denton Instagram account. Then I add ‘LINK IN BIO’ and some relevant hashtags.
I then pop over to LinkedIn. If the topic is relevant to my LinkedIn audience, I will post the same content with the blog link on my LinkedIn profile. And share it in a LinkedIn group that may have my target audience in it.
I may send the link out on my email list. But I have been very slack sending content out on email recently, which will be a focus for this year.
What my website statistics reveal
When I first started my blog challenge, my statistics showed that most of the traffic to my website came from Facebook and Instagram. But now, a year later and almost 280 blog posts later, my traffic is now coming mostly from Google. For every 50 views on my website from Google, only four come from Facebook, only one comes from Instagram, and one from LinkedIn.
What can I do differently?
My business mantra is, “Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t“. So, what can I take away from these statistics?
Firstly I don’t have to bother with creating the Instagram image to promote each blog post. So little traffic even comes from there.
I can now alternate Facebook and LinkedIn by only posting blog posts that are specifically relevant to those audiences. And I don’t need to waste my time trying to be on both platforms. This is much more productive too.
I could now ‘up my game’. I will of course continue to SEO (Search Engine Optimising) each blog post. But I will now also start keyword research to give my content the best possible chance of being found.
I have really loved the process. And I am slowly starting to reap the rewards, which is very exciting!
