There is a ton of advice out there for how to gain traffic to your site. There are many ways to do it and the same way won’t work for everyone. The only advice I think I’m going to give you is this:
Don’t try to be a jack of all trades, but a queen of one. You’ll end up spreading yourself too thin and not maximizing any of the venues.
From here I’m just going to talk about what I’ve been up to, where I’ve been going wrong, and what I plan to do from here. The top 4 social media apps are Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. I really don’t have any data with Instagram so I’m not going to mention it. It’s lumped together in my ‘other’ percentage because it’s so low, a mere 1%.
Percentages from the “Referrer” stat section of my blog
Twitter – 2%
I was involved in the blogging community on Twitter first I think. It was great for connecting with bloggers and relating to their struggles. I put a lot of time and effort into growing my presence and following on Twitter. Twitter is where I announce my new books and blog posts. I liked the platform and I understood it.
2 years later and I think this is the first time I’m actually checking the stats for where my traffic is coming from. I’m very surprised to realize I’ve been wasting all this time meanwhile Twitter is the 6th referrer by a large margin. I’m going to redirect most of my time to Pinterest and see if it makes a difference.
Facebook – 4%
I have not taken the leap to making a blog or author page on Facebook and I don’t think I will. I get decent traffic from Facebook groups but I don’t really feel it’s organic so I don’t think that’s where I want to grow. Well organized groups will have specific posting on specific days to promote your blog or social media with either likes, comments, or follows. To ensure no one is taken advantage you’ll usually have 2 days to check out everyone else’s site so traffic is pretty immediate.
Pinterest – 8%
I’ve heard Pinterest is a gradual build with traffic but it is long lasting once you get there. A pin has a month long lifespan while posts from Twitter or Facebook are mere hours. This might explain why Pinterest, which I haven’t used since March, is still my second highest referrer. That’s right, I didn’t use Pinterest for over 5 months but it close to doubles Facebook’s traffic which is next in line. I don’t use Facebook every month either but I think Facebook works more as ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
screenshot of Tailwind dashboard
Pinterest is pretty hard for me to grasp though. It took me a while to get the hang of creating my own pins. It’s a lot of work in the beginning between finding group boards to join, creating all your pins and boards, and setting up your advance scheduling with tools such as Tailwind. Tailwind has a free month trial and then you’d pay $120 for a year membership. You can schedule hundreds of pins weeks in advance and you can also join Tailwind tribes.
screenshot of canva workshop
I had a membership last year but I was still figuring out how to use Canva to create pin graphics and the whole scheduling process took so long for me. It was exhausting, frustrating, and there were many weeks when I just did not have time for it. I knew it was time to cancel my membership and regroup.
Months later now, I’ve found this data and decided I need to give Pinterest another chance. Luckily, I’m still in the same groups but I will be looking into joining more which will be time consuming. I already made 21 new pins over the past few weeks so now I feel ready to get back into it and not feel like I’m lagging behind. I will most likely consult people with more experience to point me in the right direction this time.
The bullet points:
Twitter is great for feeling less alone in the blogger struggle
Facebook can bring traffic within a day or two and best for advice
Pinterest will continue to bring traffic even if you neglect it for a long time.
I’m going to make this pie graph again in 6 months and see if I’ve made any impact so make sure to check back in for that update!
Debatably Dateable 