Analysing the stats behind my first week of blogging
After sharing some stats from my first week of blogging over on Twitter I was asked how I achieved over 900 page views. It was a great question, so I dug into my analytics and considered the variables.
So in this off-topic post, we are going to be taking a look at:
- Various stats pulled directly from Google Analytics
- Any unique circumstances I may have benefitted from
- How social networking has impacted the statistics
- How the platform you choose to host your blog makes a difference
- A few tips I have for making your post more appealing
You will also find an invite to a content creators club that is exclusively for tech creators at the end of this post.
So seven days ago today, I published my first article here on my hashnode blog and in that time I have published 〈 2 posts 〉 that have amassed over 〈 900 page views 〉 from more than 〈 400 users 〉, who left 〈 45 reactions 〉 and 〈 5 comments 〉.
Reasons
Looking at the top-performing channels alongside the variables I mentioned earlier, I can attribute the following reasons to the decent performance of the two blog posts.
- Privileged Circumstances
- Social Networking
- Perks of the platform
Privileged Circumstances
This section outlines sources of traffic that might be unique to my circumstances and might not be something you can easily replicate/have access to.
Over half of the visitors to my blog were categorised as direct by Google Analytics, people that typed the URL of my blog directly into their browser. It is therefore pretty difficult to know exactly how these visitors heard of my brand new blog.
However, If I had to make an educated guess, I would imagine the majority of the direct visitors are a result of being a community manager for the Zero To Mastery community of more than 200k developers over on Discord, where I have my blog address as my custom status.
The problem is this is just my best guess and not a guess I am super confident about. The reason for that is because I also have bit.ly links in my Discord profile, including my blog, yet none of them has anywhere near that number of clicks. They average around 2 clicks each per day.
Social Networking
This section covers the second biggest segment in the top-performing channels of my blog.
So, social media accounted for 103 visitors to my blog over the last week, although approximately 75 of those and 105 pageviews can be attributed to the tweet HashNode made today recommending my post, which I think should really fall into the next category (Perks of the platform).
I'm still pretty earlier in my blogging and social networking lifecycle, so I am pretty pleased with the results so far. This is something I expect will change once I have more posts to share while engaging with the people I connect with on social media. Talking of which...
Perks of the platform
In this section, we will take a look at the benefits received by the platform and how its been responsible for my growth so far.
If you have been following along, you will by now know that HashNode host my blog, and this was an intentional choice on my part. I did briefly consider building my own, but it made more sense to let HashNode handle the content delivery, whilst I concentrated on creating the content.
Sidenote, If you are considering blogging yourself check out the features Hashnode offer and get your free blog. If you sign up with my link, I'll be notified you joined and will be able to check out and follow your content!
Anway the biggest reason that pushed me to use a platform like Hashnode, is the fact they help to surface your content and drive traffic to your blog and as we discovered in the previous section, a single tweet from the official Hashnode account has already driven 75 visitors, creating over 100 page views.
On top of that referrals from their website is currently my third top-performing channel. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell where exactly on the Nashnode site these visitors come from, but I imagine the traffic is mostly generated from the user's feed or tag exploration. However, I suspect receiving comments from other users produce traffic as the interaction is left on their profile.
If this is the case I very likely benefitted from the comment Eleftheria (one of Hashnodes community managers) left on my Ultimare Youtubers List.
Another benefit of a platform like Hashnode and Dev.to is that services such as Daily.Dev pick up your articles and promote them on your behalf too. This was a nice little bonus for me, that helped drive 80+ visitors to my Youtube list post.
Where can I improve
Since I am still pretty early in my blogging and social networking life cycle there is plenty to improve upon, but I have identified a couple of places I'd like to focus/investigate.
- I'd like to look into other places to share my content in a meaningful way.
- I'd like to network and build meaningful relationships with other tech bloggers and content creators.
Join Content Creators Club (Working name)
Join the brand new Discord exclusively for tech content creators to share tips, bounce ideas, critique content, collaborate and generally hang out.
DM me on Twitter, with a link to your blog for the invite!
Tips for other bloggers
I don't know that I am qualified to be handing out tips, but here is a few things besides the learnings above that have worked for me.
- Ensure you pick an engaging title, if it doesn't pique interest the content of your article is irrelevant, no one is going to read it. This article might help with creating catchy titles
- Create an engaging thumbnail. Again this is the first visual your readers get about your post, make it count. I use Canva to create appealing thumbnails that reinforce the topic of the post and even include details I couldn't fit into the title.
- Write an epic introduction to your post. Make sure you're not losing readers in the first few paragraphs. I like to refer to this article every time I write a new introduction.
I hope you enjoyed and found some value in this impromptu off-topic blog post. If you did be sure to connect with me on Twitter and consider signing up for my monthly newsletter.
