May State of the Blog Report

Three months down and many more to go! In an effort to give you a peek behind the curtain, we are back to share with you something very near and dear to our hearts:  the State of the Blog Report.

Just as a reminder from the first report: we intentionally make known our  status reports as a way to share with you and the blogging community what we have found that works and what doesn’t. It is a way for us to see what our baseline is and how we need to improve.

We do these posts because it is helpful for us to see where we have come from, where we need to grow and work on, and hopefully help others who are starting their own blogs. We do not claim to know it all, we simply and humbly share with you our results saying this is where we have come from , this is what we are building on, and where we hope to keep growing.

The thing about blogging is that it is a LONG journey! Very rarely is a blog successful overnight or in a week, or even a month. Being a successful blogger takes time. For some, they are blessed with quick success. But for many, it is a slow and steady build up that for some ends up fizzling out as the time and factors of life get to be too much to produce the content needed.

We all see and read about the success stories. In our humanity, we don’t always think about the time, effort, and energy it took to get to that point. At least I don’t, I should say. But for many, the numbers came after a long time. It came as the content got better, the website was improved, the marketing continued, and really there was more content and the fan base continued to grow. This is part of the reason for doing these post in our infancy so that you can see how we grow (and if that happens).

As shown from the first State of the Blog report, we have seen this model done from our internet friends at “Pinch of Yum”, but have not seen this from a travel blog or really many other types of blogs. We love the concept of their income reports and wanted to take that concept and adapt to a new travel blog. We are four normal people who work full time jobs and try to share our passion for traveling and culture. As time goes on, we hope momentum will continue to grow. There will probably be a time when we hit a wall that seems like we just can’t get over, but hopefully we will break past that barrier, and then the next, and the next, and so on. As the momentum starts growing and the foundation is being constructed, some really cool things start to happen. It probably won’t be in an instant, but like a seed, it will grow. It will take the right amount of water and sun. You will probably keep checking every day to see if anything is there. Right? I do when I plant.

Day 1: Plant seed.

Day 2: Go check on seed, nothing.

Day 3: Check on seed again, still nothing.

Day 4: Ok, I did plant a seed right? Is it in there? Did a bird come and take it?

Day 5: Still nothing…wait… is that a little bump in the soil?

Day 6: Just a bump, but nothing.

Day 7: Nothing again…wait…I see something green… whoa, it’s a little leaf.

That is a picture of all of us probably with something in our lives. We want to go from seed to harvest in a day. But like a seed it doesn’t work that way. The seed must die in order to produce fruit. The seed must undergo a transformation. Even when it starts growing and a leaf happens, there is still much growth yet to occur.

You see, whether it is life or a blog, no matter how much we don’t like it, especially me, it takes patience. It takes time, effort and work and that is what I imagine everyone will tell you about practically anything you want to be good at. So for all our fellow bloggers, hang in there. Keep going and don’t give up. Keep sowing those seeds and watering and watch for something amazing to happen.

Numbers

This past month was our strongest month by far. David and Rebekah brought the first international posts with their series on Prague. We also saw increased traffic for some of our “older” posts.

The sessions is up 51%, the user is up 61%, and the pageviews is up 43% all over last month. Another item of note is that our percentage of new users is up to 72% as more people continue to find us and our content. Looking at the graph, we saw several days that had extremely high traffic for us, which made us all giddy, as more and more people checked us out. (For a description of what all these words and terms mean, check out the first post as Rachel described them there).

Next, we continued to see Facebook be our strongest source for people to find us and get to the site. Our organic Google numbers increased substantially over the last month as well.

What Worked…and What Didn’t

We increased our focus on social media with different marketing strategies and that helped a great deal. We do want to give a quick shout out to various friends and family that shared our page on Facebook and invited their friends to join. If you visit our Facebook page, you can see our number of likes has gone from a little below 100 last month to almost 200 now. Twitter continues to be a great way to connect and share our stories; as that has grown, we’ve been amazed at all the cool followers we have. This past month saw a surge in Instagram; mainly being able to showcase Prague helped us out greatly with various foreign and travel group members. It was amazing to see some of the professional photographers and travel groups that followed us. We are seeing more engagement in Pinterest which is good but we also recognize that unlike food blogs that can “pin” their recipes to generate traffic, it doesn’t always work that way for a travel site (at least not from what we have found, so if you have any tips, please share, we would love to hear about it).

We recognize we have a lot to do and improve on. We continue to take baby steps each day and as some may have noticed, the website seems like it is continually improving and being streamlined. There are areas that still need to be worked on like increasing our blog followers as that has been static for a while, but in time we hope that will grow.

What does all of this mean? We celebrate the victories. This does not mean we have hundreds of sponsors and will be joining Anthony Bourdain on his travels any time soon. We also recognize that we had one good month for us. There are many blogs who also just started that have been blessed with thousands of hits and are already traveling on press trips or getting offers for reviews. Next month, we could go crashing back down only getting 1-2 visitors a day, even though we did all the right things. The traffic we experienced was good and improving but we also recognize we have a long way to go and we need many more months of growth. We celebrate a better month but also recognize there are many wonderful bloggers out there that get our traffic numbers in a day, an hour, or even a minute. We hope we are gaining more traction as we continue to post and the traffic will come.

We continue to look at our social media and see ways that we can connect with you better. If anyone is in the DFW area, please connect and come share a pint with us one night.

Summary

Truly, it is easy to get caught up in the numbers. It is easy to be focused on that because let’s face it we are human.  Especially in Western culture that is results driven and about the accomplishments, it is easy to get caught up in the results. Honestly, I do all the time.  But, we want to take a moment and say thank you! Visitors to this and to other pages, we are truly blessed to have you and we are thankful for you.

As we have ventured into the crowded travel blog market trying to separate ourselves from others, we have worked hard to provide you with a professional product. Before this blog actually came into being, it was important for us to establish a few guidelines, values, and a mission statement. We are four individuals with four different perspectives and sometimes different visions. Incorporating all voices and visions into all that comprises “From Texas to Beyond” has been a large task; and not always fun. While the numbers are important, this is a very long journey. Patience is required and we have to continue to produce professional work. The road has been tough in more ways than any of us thought. There is a saying that has stuck with me and I use it now because it seems to fit, “In the search for the Holy Grail, it is not about finding the Grail itself, but about the journey to get there.” The Grail [the finish] is important, but it is the journey that changes a person.  You probably won’t remember the finish other than that you completed something; but you will tell of the journey that it took to complete it. Something amazing happened when you have four people with four different perspectives all say they are proud of the work. Think of our farmer again. We are in the process of sowing seeds. It takes a lot of work, effort and time with difficulties along the way. But one day, you get to reap what you sow (hopefully, you sowed well).  It is easy for me to focus on the negatives and get down; but the numbers will come as we continue sharing. We will work hard to continue to share with you our passions;and we hope you will come back as we learn how to blog (and blog better) and share our stories with you.