Grow Your Blog with Monthly Blog Reviews and Goal Setting

Growing your blog is no easy task, especially if you are a newbie and have no other blog or audience to help boost your new blog. Something that works well for me is performing a monthly blog review and setting SMART goals every month. These are skills that you need to use to grow your blog.

In this post, I am going to discuss my recent challenges and explain how I review my blogging stats and create SMART goals. If you are ready to grow your blog as a business, you are in the right place.

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April and May 2018

I have always been upfront with you about my struggles and that isn’t about to change. The past month-and-a-half I have been off-track with my blogging. Yes, I have blogged consistently and marketed my blog a fair amount, but I have been suffering from a bit of the blogging blahs following the Pinterest update.

Prior to the update, I was on a roll, doubling my pageviews every single month. Then, wham! The Pinterest update took place. Overnight, my traffic dropped drastically. It was disheartening, stressful, and discouraging.

I was able to recover some of my traffic loss for a while, but over time, it has continued to decline slowly with small spurts of gains between the huge dips. However, other things have changed as well.

What else changed?

• Stress in my personal life
• I didn’t perform an in-depth review of my blog every month
• Not setting SMART goals, which work well for me (see my SMART Goals post here)
• I felt discouraged and burned out

So, here I am at the end of May and I am about to make some big changes in my blogging attitude. Sometimes you just have to kick your own butt to get back on track. I truly believe that if you work hard, you can succeed at blogging.

I am writing this post for those of you out there who are going through something similar. Just know that if you are in the middle of a slump, you can get out of it and this girl’s got your back. Here are the steps I am taking to get back where I need to be with my blog.

Step 1: Review My Stats

My first step is to review my end of month statistics. I don’t have to wait until the 31st to do this. The statistics that I will review are from May 1 through May 28th in this post. Be sure that you choose the date range that is appropriate for your review throughout. You may have to change this between each page you load on various programs.

The two resources I plan to review are Google Analytics and Pinterest Analytics. These are free and every blogger has access to them. I have not been very active on social media, so I’m not going to bother with those stats this month, other than to get a baseline.

However, you should do these as well at the end of every month. Don’t just focus on your follows. Pay attention to your likes, comments, shares, and engagement on all of your social media platforms. However, I recommend that you only focus on growing one platform at a time and simply maintain your others.

Google Analytics

If you don’t already have Google Analytics linked to your blog, you should do this ASAP. Google Analytics is the most comprehensive resource you have to review your blog’s performance. It is necessary if you plan to grow your blog.

The first area I  look at is Audience > Overview. The overview gives you a great at-a-glance review of your blog’s performance for any time period. Below is a screenshot of what you will see on this page.

The following are the statistics you should focus on and my numbers for each:

Users: 2,109
Pageviews: 10,172
Pages/Session: 4.10
Sessions/User: 1.18

The Users are the total number of individuals who visit your blog. Pageviews are the total number of pages, posts,  and sections that a visitor views. Pages per session are the average number of pages a visitor views each time they visit, and sessions per user are how many times each user returns.

Compare

Now, that I have my May statistics I’m going to go back to March when I know my stats were doing well and see what has changed and try to determine the cause.

Here is the screenshot for March’s Overview:

Users: 3,030
Pageviews: 14,392
Pages/Session: 4.09
Sessions/User: 1.16

As you can see, I had a lot more users and pageviews. If I adjust these numbers for a for a 28 day period (March includes 31 days), I would have 2,736 users and 12,999 pageviews.

What Changed?

Now, I’m going to try to understand what changed between the two time period. You will need to do this for both the increases and decreases in your analytics data.

First, let’s look at the sources of traffic. To do this, go to Aquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

These are a breakdown of my sources of traffic:

Pinterest: 1,707
Direct: 175
Email List: 53
Social Media: 53
Google: 14

As you can see, Pinterest is my greatest source of traffic. Pinterest.com (US), Pinterest.ca (Canada), Pinterest / Social, Pinterest.co.uk (United Kingdom) and in.pinterest.com (India) account for a total of 1,707 of 2,109 users, which is 80.93% of my blog’s traffic.

Direct traffic can come from a number of sources, but I suspect a number of these are from Instagram since I list my simple URL in my posts. I also link to the posts via my bio, but I always notice an increase in direct traffic on days I promote a post on Instagram.

After that, my newsletter is my next greatest traffic source. If you haven’t already done so, start an email list now! Your email list subscribers are already your fans and have the greatest return on investment (ROI) of any marketing source. (If you need help starting your email list, check out this post).

Finally, social media rounds up the remainder of my visits. Since my posts were few and far between, it’s a little surprising I received this many pageviews. And of course, Google comes in last. This isn’t surprising as my blog is only 5 months old.

Compare (Again)

Now, let’s look at March’s traffic.

Pinterest: 2,243
Direct: 657
Email List: 19
Social Media: 11
Google: 0

With this breakdown, you can see that my greatest changes are in my Pinterest and Direct users. I have since built a larger email list and am working on improving my email skills, so the increase in visits from my email list makes sense.

What Changed?

My Pinterest visits dropped from 2,243 users in March to 1,707 in May. I can attribute the majority of this change to the Pinterest update in April. However, I have been slightly less consistent, so that will have affected my numbers a bit as well.

My direct traffic dropped drastically, from 657 in March to 175. I was more active on Instagram at this time, so that’s a huge part of the reason for the change. Another possibility is that I had a post that was shared on social media by some influential bloggers. If they included my URL, it may have contributed to more direct traffic as well.

This is an example of how you can use data between to time periods to help develop your strategies in step 2. Keep these changes in mind for the next section of this post.

Pinterest Analytics

Now that we have looked at some Google Analytics data, it’s time to hop over to Pinterest Analytics. If you are new to Pinterest Analytics, be sure to check out Megan Fulton’s guest post from last week. It is full of information to help you use Analytics to its fullest.

The first section I will look at is the data from “Activity from jackieison.com.” This, of course, will have your website instead of mine. To access the data from this section, click on the “More” link in the top-right corner of your Pinterest Analytics Dashboard.

The default tab on the following page will be the “Impressions” tab. Under the tabs, but above the data, you will be able to select the date range to pull data from. You will need to do this with each tab you visit.

I am currently most interested in my “Saves” and “Clicks,” so these are the tabs I will be focusing on, for now.

The Update’s Effects

Since the update, Pinterest is delivering your most engaging pins to a larger audience. Saves, Clicks, and Comments are your engagement factors, whereas impressions are the audience that sees your pins.

That’s why I am focusing on Saves and Clicks in June. These are the factors that will grow my Pinterest account.

Saves

Saves are the repins your pins receive. Scroll down to the “Pins people save most” section and click the “Show more” button below the box. This will show you which of your pins has received the most saves. The following is a screenshot of my results.

Unfortunately, you can only view the most recent 30 days worth of data here. Although limited, this data will help you develop an effective strategy.

I want to look at a variety of factors here. The first is the topic of the pins. This is the subject matter. Ask yourself, what subjects are popular with my audience?

Next, consider the content of your pins. Do your popular pins contain the title and keywords? Do they have a call-to-action? If so, what is that CTA? Do you use teaser headlines? Ask yourself which common traits do your most popular pins have in common?

From the above data, I can determine that intermediate and somewhat technical posts are most popular with my audience. The most popular post above also contains a teaser headline with a freebie offer and a clear CTA. This is something I need to consider including in future pins.

Clicks

Clicks, in my opinion, are the most important pin factor for my blog. If a post is getting a large number of clicks, that means more users, pageviews, and opportunities for users to become subscribers and fans!

Something to note before I continue, if a pin gets a large number of saves, it doesn’t necessarily mean a large number of clicks. Keep this in mind while developing your strategies.

Below are my pins that received the highest number of clicks for the past 30 days

As you can see, most of these are very different from the most saved pins, although the first is another pin of the same image from the same post.

Recently, I noticed that “clicks” seem to be more heavily weighted for Pinterest impressions than saves. If you notice the top “Clicks” post is the same exact image (although it is a different pin id) as the top “Saves” post.

The Saves post received 100 Saves and 6 clicks, but only 293 Impressions. That means that it was seen on Pinterest by 293 people. However, the “Clicks” version received 51 “Clicks” and “41” Saves, but received 20,004 Impressions! That’s a huge difference!

I ask myself the following questions:

• What is the subject of the pin?
• What is the content of the pin?
• Visually, why is this pin more appealing to others?
• What is the pin headline?
• Does it include a CTA? If so, what is the CTA?

These will be an important part of my pinning (and content) strategy for June and should be for yours as well.

Step 2: Create Your Strategies

If you want to have a successful blog, you need multiple strategies. A strategy is your game plan for your blog. They all start with a common goal in mind. Keep in mind, there are short-term and long-term goals. That’s why setting SMART goals are an important part of your strategy.

SMART goals give you specific, attainable goals and help you develop a plan to achieve those goals (Read more about SMART goals here). This is why they are so effective for bloggers wanting to grow their blog.

The following is my June goal:

“Increase my blog traffic to 15,000 pageviews by the end of June through my new Pinterest strategy and writing intermediate content for my readers.”

With that goal in mind, I’m going to cover how I plan to create my Content, Pinterest, and Social Media strategies to achieve these goals in June.

Content

Now that you know the type of content your readers enjoy, it’s time to use that to your benefit. I do this by brainstorming topics based on the subjects my audience is showing a strong interest in. Once I have a list of topics, I narrow those topics down and try to find ways to create my own unique spin on things.

This is important when you are writing about a topic that others have already written about. It helps to separate you from the pack and gives you an edge.

Once I have enough topics to fill in my editorial calendar, I plan which order I would like for those posts appear. Once I have an order, I plug those topics into my editorial calendar. I use a plugin as well as a physical calendar to do this.

If you want to know more about planning your content and using an editorial calendar, check out “How to Create a Content Strategy for Your Blog Using an Editorial Calendar.”

I always start with my content strategy because it will affect all of my Pinterest and social media content. Completing your editorial calendar first will make it much easier to plan your Pinterest and social media content around each post.

Pinterest

My Pinterest strategy is going to see the biggest shakeup in the coming month. From everything I have read and seen in the update, it is important to create new pins for your posts with new descriptions.

From my experience, pins that have a teaser headline and CTA have the highest engagement.  Higher engagement means that my pins will receive more impressions, which will lead to more pageviews. I plan to use these techniques in more of my new pins to grow my blog in June.

Another thing I had tried last month was moving the time frames in which I pinned manually. This hasn’t worked well for me. So, I am returning to my previous manual pinning schedule that worked well for me.

To save time, I am going to be scheduling a lot more of my pins than I have in the past. This will free up time later in the day when I am busiest. I will use a combination of Tailwind and Boardbooster for this.

If you haven’t tried Tailwind, be sure to sign up for your FREE trial here. You don’t need any payment information to do this, so it is completely risk-free. Be sure to read my blog post, “9 Tailwind Secrets that Will Explode Your Pinterest Views” to get the most from your Tailwind account.

Social Media

Since I seem to have the best results from my Instagram account, I want to focus on Instagram in June. That means building and promoting like crazy on the platform.

Posting 3 times per day, 7 days per week works best for me. Thankfully, Instagram allows direct post scheduling now. That will save me loads of time and sanity.

I have used Hootsuite, Tailwind, and Later to schedule my posts in the past. I may use a combination of the three for June, but I tend to lean toward Hootsuite because I can schedule across so many platforms from the same post.

I’m still trying to figure out Instagram for my blog, but it seems to help my pageviews when I take the time out to plan my Instagram posts in advance.

Step 3: Take Action

Now that I have a strategy, I need to follow through. Follow-through is one of the toughest parts of setting any goal and creating a strategy. Life happens and suddenly, you find yourself sidetracked.

If you find yourself straying, you have to find a way to get yourself back on track. For my marketing, I have alarms on my smartphone go off to remind me to pin and post at peak times.

Most of you have a smartphone! Learn how to use the apps and tools on it to stay on track! If you want to succeed badly enough, you will find a way to make it happen.

If you need a little motivation, listen to some entrepreneur podcasts or watch some motivational speeches on YouTube. This has helped me think more positive about my blog, which is a business.

Podcasts I recommend are School of Greatness by Lewis Howes, Boss Girl Creative Podcast by Taylor Bradford, and The Do You Even Blog Podcast by Pete McPherson.

I also recommend watching interviews and speeches on YouTube with Mel Robbins, Tony Robinson, and Lewis Howes, among many others. There are many places to find inspiration, but it’s up to you to act on it.

Step 4: Accountability

Finally, accountability is a huge part of setting goals and achieving them. Many people go into business for themselves and find that they don’t do so well with self-management. They simply aren’t self-motivated and need guidance.

If you need that, find a way to get it. Hire a coach, join a Facebook goal accountability group for bloggers. Do what I am doing right now and tell your audience what you are going to do, knowing you have a responsibility to your audience.

Set a date, time, and schedule for your blogging tasks. Make things happen by those dates as if you were working in a traditional office with a supervisor.

If you can’t be accountable, you won’t be able to succeed as a blogger. Period.

Grow Your Blog By Leaps and Bounds

Once you know how to review your blog and the steps it takes to create goals for your blog, you will be able to grow your blog in no time.

Blogging isn’t always easy, and unless you know other bloggers personally, it can be a lonely venture. Don’t be afraid to reach out and network with your fellow bloggers for support.

I really hope these tips will help you manage your blog and set goals that are achievable. If you have any advice for other bloggers, please share it in the comments below. Thanks so much for reading!