Second Month Blog Report

Curly Bun Mom is two months old! Woohoo!

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This month didn’t feel as smooth as my first month but I’m really happy with my results overall. Did I hit all my goals? Read on to find out.

I set out to learn Pinterest and Tailwind in February and of course, Pinterest decided to make a big announcement about their best practices that seemed to turn the Pinterest world. This made my confusion over Pinterest and Pinterest strategies worse!

As I mentioned in my post two weeks ago, my family and I are migrating to Canada. Needless to say, we’ve got LOTS to do. I, therefore, planned my editorial calendar in such a way that in February, I could take it easier with writing and really concentrate my efforts into learning Pinterest. The frenzy the announcement seemingly caused didn’t help my already frazzled migrating brain lol. (more on that later).

Ok, enough rambling – on to month two results!

Second Month Blog Goals

As you would remember from last month, I set my February goals pretty conservatively. As a reminder,

February 2020 goals: 

• Blog page views: 2000
• Pinterest followers: 250
• Pinterest unique monthly viewers: 40k
• Email subscribers: 8
• Invest in a Pinterest course
• Learn more about traffic growth for Mediavine

Second Month Blog Performance

Pageviews & Sessions

• Pageviews of 2000 surpassed:1175 – 3282

Unbelievably, I surpassed my pageview goal for February. I set out to get 2000 pageviews and ended up at just over 3000!

I’m super proud of myself but I have to admit that while researching “how to gain traffic”, I came across quite a few blog reports of bloggers who made well over 10,000 pageviews in their first or second month. It’s difficult not to get sucked into all the marketing and promises of getting you there faster. In the end, though, I stopped comparing because I gave myself a year to ease into blogging for a reason. I had to keep my eye on MY prize and not anyone else’s.

The jump in my pageviews is largely due to my joining one of THE BEST Facebook groups. I found myself participating mainly in two groups this month which freed up some much needed time to learn more about Pinterest.

I’m not yet seeing much traffic outside of the Facebook groups but it’s still only my second month and I only have ten posts so I’m continuing to work on SEO and Pinterest while I build up my content.

March 2020 goals

For March, I’m going to keep my pageview goals modest because even though the Facebook groups are excellent for bringing in traffic, they’re also very time consuming. I’m therefore going to continue with the easier threads and concentrate on Pinterest for traffic.

Through researching traffic growth for Mediavine, I learned that the number of sessions is what’s important to be able to apply. So from March 2020 I’m going to include a session goal for my blog.

• Pageviews: 3500
• Sessions: 1500

Pinterest 

• Followers goal of 250 missed:137 – 203 followers
• Unique monthly viewers goal of 40k surpassed: 37K – 41.5K

As I said earlier, I was already very confused by Pinterest with the various strategies out there that when there was the big announcement, I kinda froze.

The good thing though is that I was about to purchase a course that was predominantly about using Tailwind. After the announcement, I opted to buy Pinteresting Strategies from Carly Campbell. I knew that one day I was going to invest in her course as she provides the best insight and advice but I knew her strategy was for when my blog grew a bit more. Additionally, she immediately jumped on Facebook to quell everyone’s fears and packs and updated her course.

Followers

I did nothing much to gain followers this month but there was a trickle and I gained 66. I didn’t hit my goal of 250 but I’m not beating up myself over it, because again, I’ve read that followers don’t matter as much as I once thought.

Impressions

Right after valentine’s day, I noticed that my impressions and audience declined. My strategy of pinning and repinning content from January didn’t change but there were a few days where life just happened.

Many Pinterest strategists seem to agree that impressions and unique monthly viewers are vanity numbers and I guess I probably shouldn’t take too much stock in. However, I still think that they’re important in some way – perhaps it refers to your reach on Pinterest and therefore the likelihood of your pins being clicked (once they’re click worthy). I’m therefore not yet ready to ignore it.

Link Click Rate

That brings me to my link click or click through rate. In the last week of February, I started concentrating more on Pinterest and started pinning at least one new pin everyday. I also repinned my top performing pins to relevant boards. The increase in my click through rate from 0.71% at the start of my second month to 1.32% motivates me to continue with my current strategy in March 2020.

Goals for March 2020

• Followers: 225
• Unique monthly viewers: 45K
• Impressions: 60K
• Create new pins regularly
• Improve click-through rate on pins

Email Subscribers

I feel sorry for this aspect of my blog lol. I’ve neglected it big time. I didn’t create a freebie nor did I promote my existing one.

It’s something I need to work on but, for now, I’m going to take this off my plate. It may be a mistake to do so, but there’s really just so much to do and so little time.

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

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