Five 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 our status reports known as a way to share with you and the blogging community what we have found to work and what doesn’t. It is a way for us to see what our baseline is and how we need to improve. 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.
Let’s look at the numbers and see how this blog is doing.
Numbers
This past month was our strongest one yet as we have been blessed with tremendous support from our audience and other sites. We introduced a series on South Bend, IN and then brought the story back to the DFW area to focus on some of our favorite local spots.
As you can see from the numbers, we had several really good days that were a result of a spike from some of our articles getting “stumbled” from StumbleUpon. The sessions, users, and pageviews jumped 65%, 69%, and 61% respectively. The pages per session and average session duration both decreased while the bounce rate also decreased. The percentage of new users increased but that was mainly a result of new users finding us from StumbleUpon.
As for where the readers came from, you will see that StumbleUpon brought in the most with Reddit following closely behind it. We did have a major increase in spam last month which is a downside. Facebook continues to hold steady for us bringing in new and regular viewers.
What Worked…and What Didn’t
This past month was obviously our strongest numbers wise with the extra traffic from Reddit and StumbleUpon. With some of our articles making it on there, that has helped out a lot. But as you can see, once those sites “dried up”, our traffic decreased back to normal. If we were to take out the rise in traffic from those few days, we would have still had our best month as we have garnered a nice steady flow of traffic which is very encouraging to us all. The Facebook groups continue to be an amazing ally for us in getting pageviews, comments and likes. This is still a highly recommended thing to do for all bloggers looking to gain more followers.
For a more detailed look at StumbleUpon and Reddit, David has provided a brief summary:
This month, two new forms of social media provided many pageviews and new users for our site. Taking over the #1 spot from Facebook is StumbleUpon, with second place going to Reddit. While these venues provided a good boost in our statistics, there are also many rules associated with submitting links to each. Make sure you follow these guidelines, so you are not classified as a spammer.
Taking a look at Reddit, if you only link to your personal blog, you will be flagged as spam. It does NOT matter if you have amazing content. They do not want you promoting your blog/website too much. If you do not play by the rules, they can remove your content, or even completely block your URL address for multiple offenses. In addition, be aware that each subReddit’s has its own rules as well. These guidelines can be even more stringent such as content, format and age of the article. In general, the larger the subReddit, the stricter the rules. Reddit’s definition of spamming may be very different than mine, but when using their service, it is always best to follow the general guidelines. While these sites can be great, there is much to learn before you start posting your content.
Summary
We continue to be humbled and thankful for all of the support we have seen. The Facebook groups have been amazing to us and have seen some growth from Reddit and StumbleUpon. It is great to see how this little blog is picking up momentum and growing. We realize that it is beyond us and our efforts and is due to something greater than us. We do not know what the future holds, but we hope that you enjoy our upcoming series on different cities both local, near, and far.
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