Social Media & Blog Statistics - May 2018.
So we're halfway through the year - how in the hell did that happen?
I felt all motivated and prepared to make 2018 'my year' for blogging. I was going to pitch to brands, to secure more paid work than ever, to have a blog overhaul, a new look, a new focus, have more viral content and generally kick ass. But then the 'death of blogging' phase kicked in and we all lost motivation and social media became more the big thing and I just got too busy in my own life and here we are - I am feeling the slow decline the same as the rest of us.
It's not talked about in blogging to admit your stats are falling month on month but let's be real here; most of us are seeing the same pattern. I don't think blogs are dying for good, I just think they need an overhaul and a change. They're changing, we're adapting and we'll see where it goes. For now though, I deffo could get better at promoting my own work!
Instagram;
Instagram has been a funny one this month, following a few months of loving it and getting really good engagement. My Insta stories still receive loads of DM's and love but my photos on the whole have flopped this month - averaging about 40/50 likes per post. It seems to be that my hashtags aren't doing the trick anymore when the photos are the same as always so let me know if you have any tips for that one!
In terms of followers, in April I finally hit 1200 of the lot of ya after months of eeking close but at the beginning of May I went through my following and blocked any weird looking accounts, bot accounts or inactive users and it dropped my following to 1119 where it has pretty much stayed. I am very much seeing the return of '10 new followers today' and the number not moving in 24 hours which is annoying but one of them Insta things innit? I also haven't followed a single new account this month so it's unsurprising we're all having to work harder to get people to stay when you look at your own behaviour.
Twitter;
My advertisers is deffo the highlight of my Twitter for sure. I try to self promo as much as I can but when life is busy, scheduling on Buffer definitely takes a back seat. Luckily I still have my advertisers who I promote, talk about and #FF and they provide me with solid content people want to engage with and a good old GIF or two. Toward the end of the month I tried to be a little more proactive with my own behaviour on the app by making a conscious decision to stop being a passive viewer. Instead of just scrolling and reading I am trying to comment, like, retweet and click on links so hopefully I will try to continue that into June.
In terms of stats I ended April with 3711 and I have ended May with 3732 so that's a decent jump in a month if we're looking back at stats for the rest of the year. I only tweeted marginally more this month than last, tweeting 247 times in the month which isn't a lot. I did however gain over 1000 more impressions so the tweets were obviously better quality with 49K impressions. I also had 100 more profile visits at nearly 900 but half the mentions than in April at only 100.
Pinterest;
I did shit all with my Pinterest account if I am honest. I am trying to do less passive scrolling on all my social media accounts and I find I sacrifice Pinterest all too easy, when actually scrolling on Pinterest and pinning things is active and benefits my account. My monthly impressions dropped again from 1.2 million to just over 937 thousand which is all down to my viral bullet journal pins doing the rounds again (particularly my Christmas ones which is bizarre?) I ended May with 4350 followers which is a raise of about 70 which isn't all too bad when I have done very little - read nothing - in the way of promoting it.
Google Analytics;
It's the same old story with Google Analytics this month I am afraid - I started the month with all good intentions and blogged a lot and scheduled tweets and then it dropped off mid month and here we are. I didn't blog for a full fortnight and did hardly any promotion and with lack of new content, my following very reasonably dropped off the face of the earth toward the end of the month.
That being said, the stats weren't all that bad, just quite bad for me. I had 20,698 page views in April and ended up with 20,565 in May so I suppose it wasn't actually as much of a drop as I felt it was? I am just comparing it to last year when I was regularly getting 1K views a day which obviously isn't going to be happening anymore. My bounce rate stayed about the same, as did the amount of viewers on my blog and of course my all time pageviews were on the rise to over 713K. My DA however is still on 26 (the highest it has ever been was 27) so whilst I might not be creating new content so much, it would appear my old content is doing me a favour behind the scenes.
So there are for another month - a slightly more dismal affair but with the odd positive. I want to do my usual and say I will do better and I will post more and schedule more and be super productive and use all my social media platforms but let's just wait and see shall we.....
