Fifth Month Blog Report

I have so much to share in this fifth-month blog report. I’ve changed my growth strategy a bit and I’m excited to share my results and thoughts so far.

From this report onwards, my blog reports are going to look very different. My reports will now reflect growth or declines rather than specific numerical goals for Pageviews and Pinterest stats.

Since the end of my first month, I focused on traffic gains and measuring my blog’s success on that.

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What Did I Change To FINALLY see Steady Growth?

I had already decided that in May I was going to relax a bit on the traffic front and focus less on Facebook threads. I knew that most of my traffic was coming from the threads and so I expected a decline (more on this in the traffic section). This decision was made mainly due to constraints on my time.

However, by mid-May, I became incredibly frustrated with the decline of my Pinterest account. I was even more frustrated with my dependency on the Facebook share threads for page views and growing my Pinterest account.

The reality is that I can’t keep up with the threads, continue to write and create pins. The route I was taking to gain traffic and grow Pinterest wasn’t sustainable for my current life situation.

To maintain my page views, I feared that I would need to continue doing Facebook threads long term. So, I needed to figure out a better way to get traffic outside of it. Another issue with doing some Facebook share threads is that they’re very time consuming and may have been worth more if people were participating fairly. Given my stats, I am certain that I was giving more than I was receiving, and that alone suggests that participating in them was a poor use of time.

There are a couple of threads that I will rejoin once things settle with my family because the participants are fair and the groups are very well managed by the owner.

In the meantime though, I made the tough decision of stopping the traffic threads and Pinterest save threads. Instead, my focus shifted to pin creation and I got back into writing new content.

Before continuing, catch up with my first month, second month, third month and fourth month of blogging 🙂

Fifth Month Blog Goals

As you would remember from l ast month,

May 2020 goals:

Blog page views: 9000
Blog sessions: 3000
Pinterest followers: 300
Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 95k

Pageviews

Pageviews goal of 9000 missed: dropped from 14,578 to 6859

By mid-May, I knew I was going to miss my blog traffic goal. I’m not sad about it at all. In fact, I feel happier with the lower pageviews because it reflects a more authentic picture of my audience.

Based on the bounce rate and duration times from visitors on Google Analytics, I realized that by participating in those Facebook traffic threads, I was not hitting my MAIN GOAL for my blog – to help people through my experience.

I’m fairly certain that most of those views were obligatory vs people who actually read my content.

I also realized that my approach was extremely counter productive. I was getting awesome pageviews for a newbie but I wasn’t getting any time to write anymore. Nor did I have time to create and publish one new pin daily.

Another realization and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, fear that I had was that my pageviews had become highly dependent on participating in the Facebook threads.

Right now, I have a surplus of blog posts ready to be published weekly. But when that runs out? How was I going to have time to write, create pins, grow Pinterest, participate in Facebook groups, AND of course see about myself and family?

Promotion is of course, integral to a blog’s success but I don’t think my approach was a smart long term plan.

I had reached a point where something definitely had to give. And instead of taking a set back from the blog, I decided to try to grow it mainly through Pinterest and without Facebook share threads. So far I’m extremely happy about the results, just two weeks in. Even though my traffic is down, my Pinterest presence has grown.

Google Ranking

When I was trying to decide on how to shift focus with my blog growth, my husband pointed out the one fact that basically made the decision for me.

I haven’t been allowing myself to recognize the quality of my blog so far.

I’m currently ranking at #1 for eight of my posts and a few others are on the first page of Google.

When I started my blog, I dreamed of the day I would have just one post ranking at #1! By my fifth month, I have had eight!

I’m currently ranking first on Google for these posts:

#1 google search result for never too late to learn to love yourself - curly bun mom — Curly Bun Mom – #1 result for “Never Too Late to Learn to Love Yourself

Curly Bun Mom #1 result for “Becoming a SAHM MBA wasted?”

Curly Bun Mom Google Snippet for Curly Hair Basics for Moms

Pinterest Performance

Quick look at overall stats:

Followers: 360 surpassed – 418 followers
Unique monthly viewers: 100K surpassed – 116K
Impressions: 150K missed – 147k
Create new pins regularly – uploaded at least one new pin every day!

Curly Bun Mom Pinterest Growth 5th Month

For the first 2 weeks of May, I was sure that I wasn’t going to hit my Pinterest goals. I was again frustrated as I kept seeing my stats fall. I didn’t obsess over the stats as I previously did but when I checked, it was a downer for sure!

I did over Ell’s Pinterest course and felt inspired by her progress and success. I felt inspired and justified in my new way of thinking that she attained her success without using Facebook share threads.

From May 18, I stopped most of the Facebook share threads and focused on pin creations.

I started stressing less about my pin designs and started whipping up FIVE new pins daily and have been trying out various posting times and strategies.

Throughout May, I was hovering around 89K unique monthly viewers and as you can see from Pinterest Analytics, from May 18, 2020 there has been a steady increase.

On the first day of publishing a new pin (without participating in Facebook share threads), I’ve gone from getting a couple of impressions. clicks and saves to getting up to 1.5K impressions, 20 link clicks and 5 saves.

In June, I’m hoping that by being consistent with my new strategy, I see some great results.

Overall Goals for June 2020

For June, I’m going to continue trying to pin 5 new pins daily and pin to my top boards consistently directly from Pinterest. I’m going to continue pinning 20% of my own and 80% of others until I have enough posts to do more.

Similar to pageviews, I’m not going to have set goals for the stats. Instead, I’ll be tracking and sharing any growth or decline.

I hope this has helped to get a good idea of what a fifth month blog traffic report can look like.. I’d love to hear from you! – What was your experience in your fifth month?