1,000+ followers and blog analytics

Wow…1,000+ followers!! This is truly an unexpected milestone and one which I am struggling to comprehend – I didn’t expect to receive 100 followers let alone 1,000. (In fact, I vividly remember my first post, which was some 3.5 months ago and had accumulated a total of 0 views), so thank you all so much for the continued love and support. 

To me, growth is about more than obtaining followers, it’s about engaging with the community and gaining new ideas about the world from different posts. After all, knowledge is power and reading is healthy for the brain! It also just so happens that WordPress is a free library, which is home to a diverse range of subjects and perspectives 😜

My blogging story: 

From my relatively short blogging journey, I feel that I have learned a lot. At the start of this journey, I had expected to meet a community of like-minded artists and soon realised that perhaps WordPress wasn’t the right platform for me. In essence, I should have stuck to the likes of Etsy, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and Deviant Art, to showcase my work and meet other inspiring/upcoming artists. 

Instead, I was discovered by a poet and writer, who followed me and was the first person to leave a nice review under one of my posts. I was humbled by her act of kindness and reciprocated the gesture, by supporting her work in the same way that she did mine. Soon, I came across a wonderful community of writers, poets and lifestyle bloggers. By that point I was sold to WordPress and now looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way! Thanks to each and every one of you that makes up the 1,000 follower count. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the amazing community of bloggers who have supported, uplifted and welcomed me with open arms. 

Top tips for WordPress growth: 

So here are my top tips for seeing growth on the platform, without having to pay for an upgrade:

1. Ensure that you have completed your website and have a website title. In my opinion, there is nothing worse than having ‘site title’ at the top of every blog post! I personally found that once I re-designed my website, people wanted to visit my website more often and took more time reading my posts. 
2. Like/comment on people’s posts and engage with people. Bonus points for commenting. People are likely to reciprocate on your posts and other people who haven’t discovered you, will see your comment and ‘visit’ your blog, increasing website traffic. 
3. If you see that someone liked your comment or post and they seem to be an interesting blog, give them a follow. They will likely follow back, as they are initiating an interest in your personality/content! 
4. Use relevant hashtags on your posts. This will attract the right audiences to see your posts, even if they don’t follow you. 
5. Don’t neglect your blog. If you don’t post regularly that’s fine, but make sure that you continue engaging with people, via their blog posts on a regular basis.
6. Monitor your website/blog performance using analytics. (See below).

Measuring website traffic using analytics: 

One of the many benefits of using WordPress, is that anyone can receive web analytics to assist in measuring the performance of their website/blog. Best of all, this is completely FREE to access and requires no upgrade. 

The analytics feature allows website owners to see how many views they are receiving across the different blog posts/pages on their website and make the necessary tweaks to improve performance. Below are my website analytics:

In totality, I’ve received 9,290 views and my website has attracted 3,212 visitors. Below is a breakdown to show the views on my latest post: 

This is based on my latest post ‘I Spy with my Little Eye’. It’s been 18 days since I posted (I wrote this in advance of posting) and I have a total of 737 views, 383 likes and 422 comments. The breakdown includes the number of views per week. I posted on the 2nd September, hence the weeks 10th August – 30th August have 0 views. The first week after posting has seen the best views, as expected. Between the 7th – 13th September, I took a mini break from WordPress and the impact that my lack of engagement has had is apparent, with less views during this period. However, upon my return, the views have increased again, emphasising the importance of having a presence and interacting with blog posts. 

Location analytics: 

It’s also interesting to see where my viewers are coming from. According to the analytics, there appears to be a global spread, with viewers coming from different continents around the world. A deeper look into my blog analytics shows that most of my viewers come from India, followed by the U.K. and USA. However, this can change from one day to the next, as sometimes I’ve seen that the U.S. has taken the second spot and Canada has made an appearance. 

What would make this even more interesting, is to be able to see what cities/states viewers are most concentrated in. This feature doesn’t appear to be available yet, but is useful, as it would enable the tailoring of posts to suit the interests of different audiences. For example, some states in the U.S. are quite religious, so I could look to incorporate religions references into my art. 

Well, that’s all from me. Thank you for reading and happy blogging! 😊