Friday, August 07, 2015

Does Blog Promotion Actually Work? | My Stat Results ♥

Back in May I decided to up my blog promotion game. Until then I had simply dropped my links in various Facebook blogging groups and left a tweet or two on Twitter to get lost in the abyss of tweets that pass through there every second and yes it got me some views, but nothing really to write home about. I rely on this blog, this is essentially what I do in life (apart from being a stay at home mother of course) so I just have to make this work for my family and I, hence why I stepped things up and stopped seeing my blog as just a hobby and made it become something a lot more serious for me. You can read about how I tripled my blog traffic in just one month here, which explains how I promote my blog on a daily basis.

Since writing the post about how I tripled my blog traffic I've had people contact me asking for more help on how to increase their views, sadly, you can only really help yourself if you want to gain more views and attention to your blog. I simply follow all the steps I laid out in that post and those have really worked for me. Serious blog promotion takes time and a lot of effort, there's no simple fix to bring lots of immediate traffic to your site (none of which I have come across yet anyway). If you're wanting to boost your views and readership then it's up to you to do the work, you need to work for your blog, not just have your blog work for you. I've learnt this this year and I really have seen such a boost in everything since I began promoting my blog more seriously, from more reader interaction on both my blogs and social media, to people taking the time to share my posts on other sites and sometimes on their own blogs too, it's been fantastic.

I'm not going to lie, serious blog promotion takes time and can take me up to three hours a day if I'm participating in a lot of Twitter threads. I started thinking to myself - "is this really worth the hassle and effort?", so two weeks ago I began a little experiment to see just how much my blog benefited from Twitter and StumbleUpon promotion. I focused on these two social media outlets as they were the ones I used most during the two weeks. I decided to promote a variety of old and new posts so that I could really see if the promotion worked. Let me share you my results...

The first number is the before number of page views, the second is after promotion, the third is the result from promotion and the fourth is the current amount of page views that post has today.  Hopefully it'll be easy enough to follow.

Day 1 -                                                              
Wanting Another Baby (old)  532 | 864 | 332 | 1229.

Sunny Days, Toddler Kisses, Happy Smiles, Balloon Wishes (old) 191 | 377 | 146 | 537.

Melancholy & the Infinite Sadness (old) 342 | 464 | 122 | 578.

14/07/15 Twitter & StumbleUpon promotion = 705 more page views

                        
Day 2 -                                             
Ways To Keep Kids Happy & Entertained This Summer (new) 25 | 199 | 174 | 940.

My Blogging Space (old)  439 | 549 | 110 | 692.

Things I Want My Son To Know(old)  222 | 405 | 183 | 600.

15/07/15 Twitter & StumbleUpon promotion = 609 more page views

                                 
Day 3 -                                         
Why Does He Cry So Much? (new) 64 | 703 | 639 | 1181.

Wishing Life Away (old) 468 | 704 | 236 | 1272.

Dublin in a Day (old) 393 | 514 | 121 | 646.

Everything's Rosy (2nd blog) 224 | 440 | 216 | 681.

Making Memories in the Meadow (2nd blog)  810 | 893 | 83 | 956.

16/07/15 Twitter promotion = 1295 more page views

                                 
Day 4 -  
Dolly Dowsie's Guide to Blogging (old) 648 | 1149 | 501 | 1436.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse (old) 393 | 529 | 136 | 567.


17/07/15 Twitter promotion = 637 more page views


Day 5 -
My MAC Lipstick Collection (old) 941 | 1046 | 105 | 1115.

Two Seasons in One Day (old) 211 | 353 | 142 | 403.


17/07/15 StumbleUpon promotion =  247 more page views


Day 6 -
Weekenders | Sun, Sea, Sand & Stellar (new) 15 | 1216 | 1201 | 1365.

Hand On Heart Jewellery Review (new) 24 | 446 | 442 | 569.

Twitter promotion = 1623 more page views


Day 7 -
Purple Haze Amongst the Lavender (2nd blog) 2 | 537 | 535 | 1321.

Our Family Holiday to Jersey Part 1 (new) 85 | 580 | 495 | 2149.

Twitter & StumbleUpon  promotion = 1030 more page views


Day 8 -

A Little Holiday Haul (new) 88 | 798 | 710 | 2603.

Twitter promotion = 710 more page views


Day 9 -
The Wonderland Linkup #4 (2nd blog) 15 | 431 | 416 | 485.

A Day Trip To Sark | Travel & Adventure (2nd blog) 15 | 668 | 635 | 2056.

My Good Reads | Mini Book Reviews (new) 230 | 503 | 273 | 752.

Twitter  & StumbleUpon promotion - 1324 more page views


Day 10 - 

A Day Trip To Sark | Travel & Adventure (2nd blog) 668 | 1476 | 808 | 2056.

Yellow Waves & A Curly Haired Babe (2nd blog) 17 | 537 | 520 | 578.

Twitter & StumbleUpon promotion = 1328 more page views


Day 11 -
Dear Everyone Who Has A Problem With How I Raise My Son (old) 2038 | 2567 | 529 | 2673.

Our Family Holiday To Jersey Part 2 (new) 51 | 950 | 899 | 959.

Twitter promotion =  1428 more page views


Day 12 -
A Holiday To Tenerife | Travel & Adventure (new) 20 | 505 | 485 | 526.

Vintage Gesslein Pram (old) 1160 | 1550 | 390 | 1560.

Twitter promotion = 875 more page views


Day 13 -

Stats to follow from today's promotion.

As you can see, my efforts have gained me quite a substantial number of page views and this is just from promotion on Twitter the majority of times. Just this week alone I gained 10,000 page views in one day from someone seeing one of my tweets, retweeted by another person, and adding it to a social sharing page, it was amazing.

As you can also see, the post views keep growing even after the day of promotion, which is great to see. In most cases these are unique views, new people who may be discovering my blog for the first time or regular readers coming back. I shall continue with the blog promotion as I am seeing great results and I love that these views are coming from people who actually want to click on a picture or link of mine which has been retweeted or shared via StumbleUpon, it's a great to know that people who are genuinely interested in my content are the ones reading the blog.

I shall update with today's results tomorrow and hopefully they'll be just as great as the others. It's good to see that as I become more aware of what I'm doing and what threads to promote in that the views are growing to almost or over the 1,500 mark.

Since beginning this blog promotion my blog reaches over 1,000 page views or more by nine o' clock in the morning, before I've promoted anything that day. My daily page views have now grown to over 3,500 and it's so great to see my hard work paying off. It's given me a new lease of life when it comes to my blog and I love knowing that people are reading my words and looking at my pictures, the feedback has been fantastic and it's always great to have people be so positive about my efforts.

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12 comments

  1. Really great post! I am a new blogger and it's hard to promote my blog.
    If you have a minute check out my blog and write if you like it :)

    http://bbellissima.blogspot.com/

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  2. Wow such a difference. I wish I had time to promote my blog more.

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  3. Such a huge difference!

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  4. This was really interesting to read and to see the results. I wish that I had the time to promote my blog more than I do. xx

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  5. Amazing numbers, hard work pays off :)

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  6. That's fantastic!
    I always wonder about putting more time into blog promotion but at the minute blogging is still a hobby for me. I'm definitely going to look into Stumbleupon though as I haven't set it up at all yet
    AliceMegan

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  7. Promotion is definitely key and it looks like you've got it nailed :) x

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  8. Wow! I'm really impressed with your hard-work and smarts. I'm not a blogger but I'm so happy that more people are finding your blog. I really enjoy it and am glad others do too. :)

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  9. Wow these are great results. I have to admit I really don't do enough to promote my posts at the moment. It looks like promotion really helps so will get going again :)

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  10. I have 7 years of content and this post inspires me to re-post some of them on Twitter - thanks!

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  11. Good on you Fi, well deserved! Xx

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  12. Amazing stats! Well done. I have never even heard of stumble upon which is embarrassing so I will have a look tonight. Thanks

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