Social Media & Blog Statistics - February 2018.
I was never going to beat January was I? February can easily be looked at as a bit of a failure on my part because isn't the aim of blogging and tracking your stats to be improving every month? If you even skim read January's blog stats post it's clear to see I had what will probably be the best stats month of the year and it's always the case as my traffic spikes when people start looking for bullet journal inspiration on Pinterest.
That being said, I always treat January as one on it's own, a stand alone month where everyone and their dog is on my blog and then we move on and up from there. I might take a quick peek at my December stats to see how February's fair against a more normal month.
Instagram;
Instagram has been a funny old one this month. Last month I was really struggling to implement new light and bright tones to my feed after the dark of Christmas and I was losing followers left right and centre. I did a big series of polls where I asked you what you thought (you can read the results of that here) and I also really evaluated what I liked in other people's feeds and what worked in my own.
That resulted in a much happier February for me on Instagram. I actually posted a whole load less than normal, just one a day I guess but they were all much higher quality and saw me getting over 100 likes (my personal marker for a successful post on my own feed) more consistently. I've discovered that this mug from Asda will ALWAYS do well for engagement and likes and taking the piss out of yourself on Insta stories and showing a more real life side will fill you DM's till you think you're someone famous (see my highlights for me kicking a lump of snow).
Numbers wise I ended January with 1163 followers and ended January with 1181 which is an alright jump for Instagram - except when you look back and notice I ended December with 1178 so really in two months I gained a solid THREE followers. Luckily since we've broken into March I have tipped over 1.2K so fingers crossed that stays.
Twitter;
There's not a heck of a lot to report about Twitter this month. In January I had a big old clear out of people I was following and of course, naturally that meant I lost a lot of followers too. I feel like Twitter is changing for bloggers these days, definitely since I started blogging two years ago and my own personal use for it is changing too. The chats are still there but I feel like I see them less, or less people engage with them - I myself haven't managed one for probably about a year. I use it to promote my own work, which is pretty much what I see other people do, yet I rarely engage with someone else's content via the platform? I rarely see a promo tweet that makes me think "ooh I wanna read that" so I rarely click. I know Twitter does't get me a lot of traffic too so lord knows why we're all taking the time to schedule tweets that don't get read but hey, another topic for another day.
I ended December with 3680 followers, deleted a bunch and ended February with 3676 so we're basically even with two months ago which I suppose after a clear out isn't all that shabby. That being said I did tweet more and that was 100% down to being better at scheduling tweets and that meant the rest of my stats were higher too. My tweets were seen 111,000 times which was an improvement of around 20K and I gained followers but actually my mentions and profile visits were less.
I find Twitter a tricky one to decide if I care? I personally don't use the platform the same anymore and I rarely follow new people so why would I expect people to do the same for me? It's a funny one I need to think about further.
Pinterest;
I've been having a right old ball on Pinterest lately and I only wish I had more time for it. I've created a board which is name blog photography inspiration but has turned into more of a lifestyle/blog/content/photography and Instagram inspiration board and it's my absolute fav. It's really inspiring and I'm really enjoying using the platform and I think it's showing as I'm gaining followers, steadily, but daily.
I finished January with 3964 followers and I ended February with 4052 and that's only continued to rise since we flipped into March. I dropped in monthly impressions slightly from 2.6 million to 2.2 but I can't exactly complain can I? Especially knowing that initial rise in January was due to that spike in bullet journal content I mentioned above.
Google Analytics;
Oh January was fun wasn't it? January 2016 saw over 64,000 views and January 2017 saw just under 45K. February was of course never going to match up to that, especially with a few less days in the month. My target used to be 1K a day but I haven't matched that for a good six months so these days if it's around 750 views a day I'm happy.
I was actually really pleased with my blog content this month. I knew because I was going away that I needed to be ahead of what I wanted to post and I scheduled a week in advance at times and I really enjoyed being that consistent and organised. I think it showed as well because I created content I was happy with, you guys seemed to like it too and engaged with it which is the ideal.
My readership came in at 15,503 and my pageviews for the month stood at 25,826 which obviously is the expected drop from January. That being said my pageviews for December were just over 27K but that also saw a huge peak at the end of the month the closer we got to the new year so I'm pretty pleased with 25K as a base for Feb. My overall pageviews since I started blogging 2 years ago are at 648,925 and have obvs tipped 650K since we went into March so I could in theory hit my goal of 1 million pageviews by the end of 2018.
Overall? Much more your average month which will see me set for a good base for the rest of the year.
