Hello friends! I hope you are well! Since I’ve been blogging for 3 years now (where is time going???), I thought I would once again share some of the thing I’ve learned in this year of blogging! Some are smaller things, and others are more important, but I love sharing from experience. In no particular order, here are 6 things I’ve learned in the past year. Let’s jump in!
a giveaway doesn’t = a popular post
I learned this one the hard way. Last year I posted a Holiday Gift Guide that I worked really hard on (and I’m still really proud of the pictures I assembled for that post! I had some notebooks laying around for a giveaway and thought I would throw that it, and I did not get a lot of entries. It could have been a number of things, and maybe it was time of year, or the fact that I was giving away and Erin Condren product in a post that wasn’t specific to Erin Condren. But learn from my mistake and know that a post with a giveaway doesn’t always mean it’s going to be a popular post! Giveaways can definitely bring traffic to your blog, but I think thought has to be put into where to add them. You can’t just add a giveaway to any post and expect it to do well, and I think it was an important lesson learned this year!
batch film!
This has saved me this year! Whenever I film, I try to film at least two videos. I think the most I’ve filmed in one sitting is five! It’s win-win because I already have my schedule, I set-up my camera and lights less often, and I can get ahead on editing! If you are limited on time (hello wedding planning!), I really suggest doing this.
social media is tough
My number one piece of advice when it comes to social media is to try not to focus on the numbers and just be true to you and your brand. I will be the first to admit that I don’t have social media figured out, and I want to work on that. I bought a big blogging course a while back with some social media specific courses, and I hope to have time to work on those too.
I do think it’s important to post often and interact with others, which has made a big difference for me! I just really don’t understand the constant liking of your pictures, and the follow then unfollow game. But I hope to figure it out!
have some posts ready to go
This is something that I want to do- and I’m really going to work to do this in the next few months! I’d like to have a few posts on the sidelines that aren’t in the schedule. That way if something comes up and I don’t have time to film or finish a blog post, I can put that into the mix. As my wedding gets closer I’m not sure how stressed I’m going to be in September, so I’m hoping to have all of the blog posts finished as early in the month as I can. I already know what they are going to be, so what’s stopping me from starting now?
put effort into those thumbnails!
I’ve been trying to be consistent with my thumnails for Youtube, to make my videos easily recongnizable. I don’t go to the lengths that other YouTubers do, but I think they are getting much better! Now I actually put the title of the video in there and try to “pose” for pictures of my sit down videos. I actually put some thought into in, whereas a year ago I pretty much just selected the best option that Youtube gave me when I uploaded my video. You can definitely see the difference below.
Old thumbnails
Vs New thumbnails
use google analytics
I will also say to not obsess over the numbers that you see in Google Analaytics, but there are other ways to use this information to help! I’m always interested to see what posts are the most popular, and there’s a great way to help with future content!
For example, my most popular post has been My DVC Story. I was really surprised by this, and tried to come up with other ways to talk about DVC. This is why I made the post All About Disney Vacation Club! It goes more in depth to what Disney Vacation Club is, and hopefully can bring traffic to both posts!
In Google Analytics, on the left hand side select Behavior->Sit Content-> All Pages, and on the top right select the timeframe you are looking for. Once it loads it will list your mosts popular content!
I don’t claim to know everything about blogging, and I’m definitely still learning! This year is difficult because wedding planning is taking up a lot of my time. I want to devout more time to learning about blogging, and I hope to be able to do that soon. I hope you enjoyed taking a look at some of the blogging things I’ve learned in the past year. Let me know if there are any blogging related posts you’d like to see!
Other blogging posts:
What I learned in my first year of blogging
What I learned in my second year of blogging
What I learned in my third year of blogging (you’re here!)
The Blogging Tools I Can’t Live Without
Thank you for reading!
