It’s something of a taboo to think about stats like pageviews, followers and income in the blogging world, let alone talk about it, but it’s slowly starting to become more and more common. In the past, if you talked about wanting to gain more followers, it was assumed you must be a spammy blogger just out there for the freebies, but nowadays, blogging as a business is coming more to the forefront and we’re talking about it more. Forever Amber is one blog where I’ve noticed this happening with her blog traffic reports last year and openess about her blogging goals in 2017, and I’ve also read a few other posts in the past few days like this one on Skinned Cartree.
So I thought I’d do a bit of a look back over where I’ve come this year in my blogging stats and where I hope to go in the next year. I was a bit vague about my resolutions in my post at the end of December, and I think that’s because I was a bit frightened of putting specific numbers out there in case I fail. But I think that putting them down on paper (/on screen?!) will make me more accountable for them, and it’ll also help towards there being more transparency in blogging.
Bloglovin’
Jan 1st 2016: 598
Jan 1st 2017: 707
Goal for Jan 1st 2018: 1000
I’ve always found Bloglovin’ a tricky one to break into. I used to use GFC and Google Reader back in the Blogger days and had amassed a good following on there so didn’t bother with Bloglovin’ until they said they were getting rid of them so I moved to Bloglovin’. I’ve always found it hard to get into, but I’ve recently been trying to make sure I read and “love” posts on there recently to up my interaction there.
Jan 1st 2016: 1516
Jan 1st 2017: 2739
Goal for Jan 1st 2018: 5000
That’s a pretty big jump in that goal, but I’m going to try my best! Twitter was my biggest grower later in the later half of the year as I started to concentrate on it a bit more. It had been stagnating for a while, only growing by around 200 followers over the previous year, mostly because I was scared of getting stuck into it. But in the later half of 2016, I started interacting more, retweeting other bloggers’ content that I liked, liking posts and sorting out my following so that I wasn’t scrolling through endless people whose blogs I didn’t read. I’ve also been trying to schedule content when I can and tweet randomly throughout the day too so that it’s not all links to blog posts.
Jan 1st 2016: 329
Jan 1st 2017: 356
Goal for Jan 1st 2018: 400
Can anyone crack Facebook for lifestyle blogging?! It’s one I’ve always struggled with and Facebook’s algorithms don’t make it any easier. Weirdly, my Big Cup Little Cup Facebook page (almost 1000 now!) is constantly growing, and I’ve also seen quite a lot of new likes to my Disney Days page recently, but this blog one just doesn’t seem to move!
Jan 1st 2016: 2398
Jan 1st 2017: 5378
Goal for Jan 1st 2018: 10,000
I love Pinterest – love, love, love it. My Sewing the Watson bra post went a little bit viral on there and still sends loads of traffic my way now, which is when I realised Pinterest’s potential so decided to direct a lot of my focus there. Fortunately, I like spending time on Pinterest, so exploring pins, saving new ones and finding new people to follow isn’t a chore for me! The growth has slowed down more recently though (again, algorithm changes are to blame!) so this goal could be a tricky one…we’ll see!
Google+
Jan 1st 2016: 396
Jan 1st 2017: 453
Goal for Jan 1st 2017: 500
Google+ is another tough egg that I’m not sure I want to crack as it’s constantly threatening to disappear. It grew well at the beginning of the year and has sat around 450 for the second half of 2016. I’d like to reach 500 as it’s a nice number, but I won’t be sad if I don’t!
Jan 1st 2016: 480
Jan 1st 2017: 862
Goal for Jan 1st 2018: 1500
I’ve always neglected Instagram but I discovered how much I love it this year. I made it more of a focus around June/July and have been slowly working on it since then. I want to crack the 1000 follower mark in early 2017 then hopefully make it to 1500 by the end of the year. It’s another fun one that I like to use, so I shouldn’t get bogged down it the numbers!
Analytics
2015:
Total sessions: 89,327
Total users: 74,124
Total page views: 160,989
2016:
Total sessions: 89,179
Total users: 69,799
Total page views: 184,403
There’s very little change between 2015 and 2016 in my analytics really! Interestingly, my page views have gone up whereas my sessions and users have gone down – I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad really, but it’s interesting to note!
It’s difficult to set overall yearly analytics goals, so I’m going to go for monthly ones instead. By the end of 2017, I’d like to see:
2017 Monthly Analytics Goals:
Sessions: 15,000
Users: 12,000
Page views: 25,000
Do you have any blogging goals for 2017?
Ah, thanks for the link, and I´m so pleased to see you doing this! I really hate how some sectors of the blogosphere look down on people who care about their stats – as you say, if you´re blogging as business, it´s pretty essential to know how well you´re doing, and even if you´re doing it as a serious hobby, I think it´s only natural to want to do as well as you can, and track your progress in some way. No shade to people who genuinely don´t care, obviously, but I get so tired of hearing people say that if you care about “the numbers” you´re doing it wrong!
Anyway, good luck with all your goals, and if you figure out how to crack Bloglovin´and Facebook, let me know!
Author
I feel like I’m not doing something properly if I don’t have some sort of goal with it (may be a bit obsessive about things, but it’s how my head works best!), and numerical goals always work best for me! I’ve seen a few other people blogging about it recently too, so let’s hope it’s a trend 😀
xx
I agreed with an earlier comment made by Amber. Blogging although not totally–is about the numbers. If you’re trying to make a living off blogging the numbers matter because it is a business. It’s great to see how much growth you’ve made in a year hope that I will be able to have some of the same results this year. I agree though Facebook is really hard to crack if you have a lifestyle blog, but my best advice is to try and connect with as many of your fellow lifestyle bloggers.
– Avalon from simplyavalon.blogspot.com
Author
Definitely agree with you on that! I love being able to track it and seeing how much progress I’ve made – makes all the hard work worth it 🙂 Thanks for the advice on Facebook – I’m going to try commenting on more bloggers’ Facebook posts in future to see if I can connect with some that way.
xx
I love these goals and I love that you’ve put your achievements for the last couple of years as well!
I hoep you smash all of them 🙂 x
Author
Thank you! I’ll give it my best shot 🙂
Very interesting to read but it doesn’t mean much to me as a non blogger, Instagramer, tweeter. I read lots of blogs, mostly sewing blogs either by email or bloglovin and I’m a daily Pinterest addict. I hope you are able to hit your targets and reach your goals.
Author
Pinterest is SO addictive! I’m hoping to get some more sewing posts up soon 🙂 Would you ever consider starting a blog do you think?
Looking forward to sewing posts, I’ve only briefly thought about it because I don’t have a camera and I’m not sure how you take decent phone selfies (remote? Balancing and using the timer), maybe I should start a Pinterest board of what I’ve made and see how that goes, I’m also a ‘wing it’ kinda girl with how I make things and adjustments I do so I’m not sure I would be great at the writing side of things. The posts that are coming out now, Top 5 hits and misses do make me realise that it’s a great way of recording what’s been made. Never say never 🙂
These are great goals! I hope you can achieve them this year x
http://www.erinazmir.com
Author
Thanks! I’m going to try my best 🙂