Blogging tips and stats from a One Year Old
I’ve just reached my first year anniversary, and am feeling very pleased with myself for persevering! For someone who doesn’t write, it’s been an interesting journey, so I thought I’d share with you some things I’ve learnt.
First of all, to put things in perspective, I’ll go through some of my statistics with you. This is actually a bit embarrassing, a bit like revealing my measurements or my bank account balance, but let’s do it anyway.
Followers 79 Following 170 Posts 104 (including this one) Views 4453 Visitors 2616 Likes 432 Comments 67
My stats are low, and I’m sure many of you newbies have already surpassed them. The point is, despite these low stats I’m proud of my achievement and it hasn’t put me off from blogging. This takes me to my first point. Write for yourself, because you want to, not because you want people to follow you. Of course you’ll feel a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction if you get a lot of followers, everybody does. But if you get too obsessed with stats which doesn’t grow, then I guarantee you’re not going to make it to your first birthday here.
Second, despite what I’ve said above, you’ll still want to know how to increase traffic. Did you know that on average 21 posts are posted on WordPress every second?! WordPress is a community, and blogging is all about networking. Everybody will tell you to go out and network. The key is, don’t just like others’ posts, because that’s easy and frankly speaking a bit lazy because all you have to do is click click click. Leave a comment, follow them if you like their blog, and most will do the same in return. If someone leaves you a comment, always respond, I think its rude not to, a bit like ignoring a stranger if they say hello to you. If someone follows me, I always follow them back. Some say you should only follow blogs that you like, but the way I see it, if someone buys you a drink at the bar, its only polite for you to buy the next round. But the most important thing is, if you only follow blogs that you’re interested in, you could be missing out on interesting topics that you’ve never thought of reading. Blogging is not only about writing, it’s also about reading. Following back others is a great way to add variety to your reading.
Third, quality over quantity. Don’t just post any old rubbish because you haven’t posted for a while, your followers deserve better than this. On the other hand, don’t leave it for too long if you can help it because you might end up giving up. I aim to post twice a week, but it has ranged from 4 to 13 posts a month. I don’t keep a blogging schedule because I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. If I want to post and have a blockage, the Daily Prompts and Weekly Photo Challenges are great for inspiration. It’s also a fantastic way to network.
Here are some other tips which you might find helpful:
- I try to keep my posts to around 500 words (this one is an exception). Everyone is so busy nowadays, so it’s a bit unrealistic to expect them to spend too long reading just your post
- photos speaks a thousand words, and is great for breaking up the text in a long post
- get a friend to look at your blog from their mobile or PC to make sure it’s user friendly and easy to navigate around. Some older themes don’t work well on mobile phone
- don’t clutter your page with widgets that doesn’t add any value. It’s quite annoying to have to keep scrolling down before they reach your post
- tags helps people to find your post so use them, but you don’t actually need to show them on your page. Once readers have got to your post, tags are kind of irrelevant then. It also helps to de-clutter your page
- finally back to the million $ question – use social media to reach more followers. You already have a group of ready made followers through your Facebook friends. I often share my posts to relevant Facebook interest groups and am seeing a gradual increase in followers. However that’s all I use outside of WordPress. The more social media you post, the more effort is required to manage and network, so be prepared to invest your time in order to reap the rewards.
I hope you’ve found these tips useful and aren’t put off by the hard work. If you have any of your own tips, please do let me know or leave me a comment. Let’s start networking here!
Keep it up! Connection between words is marvelous.
This is amazing! Well done to you for persevering! I hope I make it to my 1 year anniversary, fingers crossed!
I’m sure you will!!
Hi! Happy to have found your blog! I love the layout, the style the content…everything! I’ve read some of your posts and I can’t wait to read more! Looking forward to following you ?
Lisa | http://www.fromdreamtoplan.net/
Thanks Lisa!
I really find it difficult to consistently manage social media + my blog but then I have underestimated just how important it can be. Since there so many posts being posted ( as you mentioned), it’s hard to bring attention to what we are doing ourselves so the more outlets that we have it on, the more chances of having a wider audience. I guess I just need to get with the program.
Congrats on one year on WordPress!
~ Bree
Thanks, and keep up the good work ?
Great post !
I was thinking some kind of loose schedule might work for me. But if i’m a day late posting its okay 😉
Thanks for the tip about Daily Posts, i looked at that and want to do it
I mean Daily Prompts
Thanks for sharing all your stats and a few tips, it’s super helpful! I’ve been blogging for nearly seven months, and I’m just about to hit 400 followers, which is absolutely incredible. The biggest things that have helped me were:
1. I conducted an interview with a well known girl (@freyahaley) right when I started. I’m still getting traffic from google searches about her.
2. I found a couple of well known wordpress blogs with a high level of interactivity, similar to my niche, and leave comments there regularly.
3. Every week I set aside time to find similar blogs and leave comments!
These have worked really, really well for me – I’m at 16 000 views and counting! But I definitely agree you have to love what you’re writing. That’s the first step. If you don’t have that, you can’t really go further.
Abby – https://seafoaming.com
I can see you’ve definitely put a lot of effort and love into your blog and I’m really pleased it has paid off. Keep going girl!
Great tips!
Great tips – thank you! I was having trouble replying to your lovely comment you sent me via another post, so thought I would add my reply here: Thank you for your nice, supportive comments on my blog. And that’s fantastic to hear you are coming to New Zealand for the first time! I hope you really enjoy your time here 🙂
Good
I really enjoyed reading this post! Short and sweet. Direct and to the point. Big ups to you for sharing your statistics. As a newbie that looks totally fine to me but again I’m still learning as well. Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Likewise, keep blogging and I’m sure you will reach and even surpass my stats very soon
[…] Pauline Y […]
Great post! Keep going and hopefully I will be there one day too.
Thanks. If you have a chance to visit Alishan ( I haven’t been myself yet) its great as a stop over
Posted in the wrong place ?. Yes, I’m sure you’ll make it ?
I really like your point about following blogs outside of your niche to broaden your horizons. I haven’t seen this spoken about before but it really is a great way to be part of the blogging community as a whole and discover new and interesting things! Also congrats on your year and thank you for sharing your stats, it’s great your so true to yourself in what you’re writing and don’t get put off by the super newbies getting thousands of followers. It sounds like you’re doing all the right things in the right way so look forward to following your blog!
You have same ideas than I, except that I do not have Facebook. Once I had, but I did not like it. This means that without it, one can get visitors and followers. My motto is: If somebody leave a comment on my post, I will surely visit his / her blog and leave my comment there. Every commentator is important to me.
My blog has huge amount of photos, but few text. If somebody wants, know more, I dig information in my response.
Regards from Finland. Happy blogging.