my metrics month one
I’m a big fan of transparency, and I have a feeling that some people in my network might be interested in seeing how my progress is going. I also thought this would be useful to those who are growing a project of their own! So, if you’d like to - you can follow my thought process here and see if you can apply it to whatever you’re working on. In this post, I’m going to be breaking down some of my metrics, setting goals, and sharing in hopes that it makes the data side of starting a personal brand a little more approachable.
It’s been about a month since I started this project, and I want to say thank you to anyone who took a look at my site or sent encouraging messages and resources for me to look into! The exclamation points in this paragraph cannot adequately express how much I appreciate it!!
My website is hosted by Squarespace, which (so far) I’m a big fan of! There are other options out there, like Wix, or Wordpress, but I went with Squarespace, probably because of the incessant marketing I have seen for them over the past several years. It’s super user friendly, has pre-made templates you can follow, and comes with a free trial. Their prices range from $12 to $40 a month, but there are a lot of discount codes available (I got mine from a Youtuber). The built-in analytics tool is easy to interpret, and does the data tracking for you.
Since this is all new to me, I’m taking a slow and steady approach to growth with 1 post a week, mostly to build the habit of posting and to hold myself accountable. I originally posted my site over the course of 3 days. The first post was on the 16th, on Instagram, the 17th was Linkedin and the 18th was Facebook - which seems to have driven the majority of my traffic the first week. Based on this information, I’m going to assume that most of the people clicking are friends and family, rather than coworkers and colleagues.
Individual blog posts did not do as well however, which I think is due to the topic choice. Taxes, Business Insurance and Health Insurance aren’t cute, funny or interesting, but it’s part of the process! There are some things that I could potentially change up to see if it results in more clicks: like the social sharing image, or the caption/hashtags. But, since the content itself is more important to me, I’m interested to see how these more “dry” topics compare to some more marketing and branding related content I have planned in the future.
Because the majority of users are visiting from their phones, I’m going to optimize future images for mobile. At the moment, I use a lot of horizontal images, so I think switching to vertical/square will be slightly more practical for phone scrolling.
There are a few other analytical tools included on Squarespace, but I thought these three were the most relevant to start with that I can actually take some steps forward with. If you think there’s something else I should include here, send a message!
Social Media Engagement
Before February I wasn’t very active on Facebook or Linkedin, so my increase in engagement (likes, comments, requests) automatically ends up being a lot higher compared to January. On Instagram, I have seen a slight increase in engagement (likes, follows, story views) but nothing significant enough to attribute to posting these blogs.
Goals
Continue posting regularly
Increase clicks by 10-15% on blog posts
Get more interaction from freelancers who have experience
Test out other content formats
I don’t think you need to have enormous goals to get started on something that you’re interested in! I’m personally trying to not get overwhelmed by some end goal and take it week by week. If you have advice or feedback for me, please reach out! Or if you have any specific topics or questions about getting started send me a message, and we can try to figure it out together. :)
Thanks again for taking the time to read this!
