Blogging

Wander with Laura’s July Blogging Summary

It’s not about the numbers BUT we all love hearing about the numbers – am I right? As someone who loves to delve into analytics tools, I can see why these type of blogging summary posts always catch my attention. It’s fascinating to get into the heart of what works and what doesn’t and also, who doesn’t love being a little bit nosy? So I’m hoping there are some of you out there who might love reading these as much as I do. In the big 2017 blogging world, my numbers aren’t huge but there’s something really satisfying about seeing how changes you make can affect your stats.

Blog Successes

Technical improvements

At the start of the month, I asked for blog feedback on Twitter and Leta from The Nerdy Me kindly got in touch offering a blog review. Her suggestions were incredibly helpful and I found it really useful to have a starting point for making tweaks. I can’t rate the value of a fresh pair of eyes highly enough when you’re feeling a bit down about your little internet space.

I’ve also been working hard on improving my bounce rate. You know those ‘Read More About…’ sections at the end of each post? Usually I’ve got more than one blog post about a location so linking them together has helped to reduce by bounce rate by 10% this month!

Collaborations

I worked on a fun collaboration this month where I got to reminisce back to my holiday in Kefalonia last year! What with being preoccupied with leaving to travel on the other side of the world – no biggie – I hadn’t written about my holiday at the time, so it was great to use some of the beautiful photos I took.

Writing guest posts for other bloggers is something I’ve been loving recently – got to up that DA somehow! My favourite post was for Life in a Breakdown where I wrote about one of my favourite countries, New Zealand so head over and show it some love if you’re craving a hit of beautiful mountain scenery.

Social Media

Since I’ve been focusing a little more on Twitter and Instagram, I’ve been pretty happy with my growth. It’s peanuts by a lot of people’s standards but considering I was barely using Twitter during my travels, it’s been a big improvement to see it grow. Instagram is still very much a love-hate game – does anybody actually like the algorithm? But thanks to a couple of boosts from some travel Facebook groups, I’ve managed to gain a lot more than usual on that front too.

158,000 Twitter impressions and 116 new followers.

+148 Instagram following from 790 on st July to 938 on 1st August.
I’d actually made it up to 950 here but then I made the mistake of not posting for a day…sigh.

In the last week or so, I’ve started going through my blog post and making the effort to create Pinterest images for them all. While I’ve been hearing for ages that Pinterest is a fab way to get your blog posts seen – and I’ve even had an account right from the beginning so I’ve really missed a trick here – it’s always felt a little too time consuming. But while I have a bit of extra time on my hands while I search for a full time job role, I thought there’s never a better time to take advantage.

Goals for August

Hit that elusive 1,000 followers in Instagram!
Create Pinnable images for all of my blog posts
Continue with my blog schedule

Coming up…

In August, I’ve got a couple of exciting things coming your way! By the time you read this, my first proper travel blogger event with Traverse will be under my belt and hopefully I won’t have made a huge tit of myself with my terrible networking skills. I’m also off to Budapest next week where I’ll be exploring the city with one of my best friends and reviewing a pretty funky looking hotel along the way. I can’t wait to feel the sun on my face again as the UK summer is not exactly ideal for my warm weather loving!

While I’m away, there’ll be a couple of new faces around here. A couple of fantastic guest bloggers have created posts on Bali and Mexico for me so I can’t wait to share these with you! Turning the tables, a few of my articles should be popping up on travel blogs this month so if you want to stay updated on those, follow me on Twitter where I’ll share them all as they go live.

That’s it from me but despite some personal setbacks, I feel like July has been a pretty solid month blogging wise! Let me know if you’d like me to do another blogging summary next month or whether it’s the most boring thing you’ve ever read. All feedback is good but please, be gentle with my sensitive feelings. Thanks guys. Oh, and in case you missed any of my posts from July, I’ll link them alllll now…

Laura x