One month into blogging; let’s see how I’ve done

Evaluation of my first month of blogging

It’s been over a month now since I started my blog, yay! I figured I would do a check in with what I’ve been up to when it comes to building and promoting it. So far, I give my efforts a solid D-. I desperately need to rethink my strategy.. or rather, I need to get one!

I need more/better content

No one really reads my blog yet, but I can’t say I blame them. I don’t really have much that’s useful or helpful yet. I’ve got a lot of posts in the works, but I haven’t actually published most of them. A lot are missing simple things like images, but then others I still need to do a little research for.

I also haven’t really been promoting like I should. I’ve just barely gotten into some Pinterest groups and since then, I haven’t written any new content. My old content hasn’t done well so far, so I’ve been thinking of testing other graphic styles. I love what I have, but maybe it isn’t working out.

Note: I wrote this post 4 days ago, I actually did come up with some new graphics. Trying some out now! Feel free to let me know what you think.

Social Media

My social media is maybe okay. I still need to create header graphics for Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. I started being active on Instagram last week or so. I’ve also turned my focus to Twitter. Twitter has gotten me a few clicks, but Instagram has gotten me 1 whole link click. That’s okay, though, because I’m really not promoting my blog there yet so much as I’m just trying to build followers. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing with Pinterest, but it hasn’t really been working out for me yet.

Instagram

I’ve already racked up almost 700 1,000 followers. I’m kind of amazed! A lot of those people are other bloggers or entrepreneurs. If course there are some spam accounts too, but most of those end up disabled or unfollow me anyway. I love when I see personal accounts following me. I feel like I’ve actually done something.

Note: Since 4 days ago I’ve gained another 300 followers. Wow! My engagement rate for the last 20 posts is 

Twitter

My next step is to work on Twitter in the same way, but since Twitter usage converts to clicks more often, I want to have more informational posts and the free graphics up that I’m working on as a giveaway for signing up for my email list.

Pinterest

I just recently learned about Tailwind Tribes. Wowowow, this is going to be huge I think. I haven’t tried it yet because I want to put up a new, super awesome, totally helpful post up to maximize sharability. That, and I’ve actually found it quite difficult to find tribes for my niche(s). I’m thinking of creating some, but then I’d also have to moderate them. I really don’t want to moderate things. Sure, I could just invite my friends, but I really want to do an open tribe so lots of people can benefit. Also, I have no friends, LOL.

Aside from that, I really need to rethink my Pinterest strategy. Or lack thereof. I was on the rise for the longest time and now my profile views and website views have sharply declined. I haven’t done anything different, so I’m not sure why. I know I can do a lot to improve my Pinterest boards, though, so that’s what I’m going to work on.

Facebook

Absolutely dead. Well, not absolutely. I have all my Instagrams sent there and also have a couple content curation services posting things there. I’m not going to officially “promote” my Facebook until I get blog visitors. For now, I’m making it look busy at least.

Google+

Almost forgot this one! Even though it’s the one place I feel comfortable promoting. This post will probably be the first I slip into some G+ communities, in fact. In the meantime, I need to get auto posting to my page set up, and also the graphics for the page.

Email List

Speaking of the list, I’ve been looking for some software to manage it. I’m probably going to start out with ConstantContact thanks to their generous 60-day trial. That will give me plenty of time to really try out the software, and hopefully by then I’ll actually have people signed up and reading my posts.

Before I get this up and running, I need to finish the graphic templates I’ve been working on. Maybe even the planner pages too. I really want to give these out as lead magnets, but I’ve also created about a billion different layouts for social media graphics, so I might even end up putting up my first graphics for sale. How exciting! This is one thing I never thought I’d find myself doing. I’m glad to have the opportunity, though, because if there’s one thing I enjoy about working in SL and IMVU, it’s making different ad templates. That seems ironic because I’ve

My Theme

Last but not least, I’m still not happy with my theme, or my branding. Wait, what branding? Yeah, exactly. I’m slowly creeping towards what I want as I experiment with creating different types of graphics. I know I’m just not going to be 100% happy with my theme. I like it, but I feel like it’s not good for the type of blog I want to run.

I’ve been looking at paid options and last week the Divi framework upgrade came out. I really want it, but at $70 a year and this month being tighter than usual, it’s slightly out of the budget. I’m splurging on it the first chance I get, though. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later. I’m absolutely in love with the ability to place things WHEREVER I WANT, WHENEVER I WANT.

That’s been my biggest gripe about the free themes. Not enough widget areas or “oh wow look there’s this one tiny thing wrong”. Sure, I could just edit the theme file but you know how WordPress works. Once the theme gets an official update, I have to replace my edits. No thanks.

Your turn!

How are you doing with your blogging? Are you new to this, or have you been at it for awhile? Are you meeting all your goals? Let me know in the comments!


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Evaluation of my first month of #blogging

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