We’re back for our second installment of what we’re calling our State of the Blog Report. This month we’ll share our hard numbers and the topic we are going to address today is using social media.
Numbers
This month we’re showing a slightly different graphic for the overall traffic report. It shows the same information as the traffic report from last month, but also presented in a graph form and with a nifty little pie chart to show blog visitors. Check our first State of the Blog Report for the glossary of terms and to compare our numbers from last month. Generally, most numbers are down, which we are slightly disappointed by, but we also had (what we think was) a strong launch; all that to say we are still establishing a baseline. Hopefully we will continue to grow in readership for those who are actually interested in continuing to follow us as a travel blog.
Since the graph and pie charts are new, I want to explain them briefly. For the graph, the x axis is the date, the y axis is the number of sessions (in royal blue) vs. the number of pageviews (in light blue). The graph shows us especially what days we saw a lot of hits on the blog. It also has helped us clue into some trends that we can compare to the WordPress stats to see what days we might be seeing more traffic. The pie chart is a nice little graphic to represent the percentage of new visitors vs. returning. It’s encouraging for us to see that we have a good mix of new and returning as we try to grow a foundation of returners while also hopefully start building new readership.
For this month, Facebook and directly typing in the From Texas to Beyond URL were the most popular ways our blog was found. It is encouraging to see that Google also came up as a referrer.
If you’ll remember from last month, WordPress counts the stats differently, which is why the numbers don’t line up exactly with Google. The details provided through WordPress are really helpful as they reflect that typically we see a decline in traffic over the weekends (when we don’t typically post anything) and see a generous bounce up on Mondays.
What Worked…and What Didn’t
Obviously we’re still new to the blogging scene, but we’re also new to managing various social media outlets as bloggers. We are learning that social media is a great tool to be able to interact with readers while learning how to strike a balance between using the blog posts as a platform for interaction vs. social media.
We are currently active on several social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Flickr. We’ve seen growing “Follows”, “Likes”, “Repins”, etc. from each of the various outlets, but aren’t exactly sure how to gauge what would be considered “successful”. (Shameless plug, consider connecting with us on the links above or on the sidebar!) Since we started them at the same time as the blog, we don’t know what is a good measure for growth, how quickly we should see the growth, etc. This has definitely been a learning opportunity for us as we consider our current statistics and research what others have to say on this topic while also strategize ideas for additional growth.
It seems that the most responsive interaction we’ve received has been on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We manage those on a daily basis and try to respond as soon as we can to various people. That being said that also leaves us to wonder if we still should be engaging on Pinterest and Flickr. For now, we are hopeful to continue using all of these social media tools not only to engage with returning visitors but also to expand our visibility. As we gather more stats to see exactly what readers are looking for and how they connect, we’ll consider what we might need to eliminate (or add!).
For those who blog, do you also manage social media? What strategies would you share with us for managing those efficiently and effectively?
Hey guys. I am loving the blog! Be encouraged! At least for me, part of the lack of comments and interaction is driven by the fact that I’ve never been out of North America. So while I am fascinating and soaking up the posts from Eastern Europe, I really have nothing to contribute. I am highly enjoying the posts, however!
Regarding your ‘social media’ questions: I am in NO way a blogger or social media guru. The questions that came to mind while reading were are you trying to be ‘all things to all people’ as a blog? Do you have a target demographic, and if so does that demographic use one platform over another? If your goal is to capture the 30-50 year old crowd, I think your initial analytics are showing what I would expect: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. As a 36 year old white male, I do not have a Flickr account. I also only use Pinterest to find DIY home projects. Pinterest isn’t a tool I use to interact with anyone. I am not saying I am ‘typical’ but doing a little research on what your target demographic is using could help you double down on one or two platforms instead of being a generalist across all of them.
My opinion, not that it bears any weight, is that you are putting out well curated and put together content. No doubt it is taking precious time, but we all know that quality takes time. And more times than not, quality over quantity wins the day! Keep doing y’alls thing!
Hi Justin,
Thanks so much for your encouragement and thoughtful response. You’re so right, we’re working on narrowing our target audience which should help us eventually determine what platforms we engage in long-term; finding that balance between engaging with our current readers and expanding visibility is tough to strike! Thanks for being a faithful reader and again for your comment!
Rachel
A lot of time as I surf looking for things, I find a blog, read through it, and enjoy it. Other times im searching, find a FORUM, see a user’s entry or comment then notice they have a blog in their signature.
Certainly there are some forums you can participate in related to travel, breweries, food, texas?
Your statistics should have information reguarding which keyword in a search engine, referrer, or other information which will be useful.
Obviously you want to submit your website to the search crawlers — yes you must submit them! Submit to as many as you can.
META tags in your HEAD (think keywords) will enliven the search results for this main landing page as well as each entry
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp
— Edit, actually I found the Meta tags buried in there “optimized with the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin”
Hello!
Thanks for commenting and for your feedback and suggestions; we are relatively new to blogging and appreciate it! Great thought to engage in various forums, we haven’t explored that as much so we may have to research that more and see what we come across. Another steep learning curve–understanding SEO! We have been utilizing Meta tags, keywords, and submitted our site to search crawlers–I hope as we learn more how to better optimize those tools, we would eventually see more traffic. Thanks again for your comment.
Rachel