How I got over 14,000 views in a month | June Blog Report

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It’s finally July, and we’re suddenly half way through freaking 2016!

That calls for some kind of celebration right? Like an omg-how-§ridiculous-were-our-new-years-resolutions party.

Well I’m always a little excited about the beginning of a new month, because that means I get to crunch a lot of data, and learn what worked and what didn’t work for the blog over the past month!

Unlike in real life, I feel like so much has happened in June blog-wise, like I won a freaking award! And I tried some new strategies that paid off big time.

So let’s break it down:

Most read posts in June

Most discussed posts from June

Most shared posts from June

Blog traffic

As you can see, a single person is responsible for the fact that I can call this post How I got OVER 14,000 views in a month rather than just How I got 14,000 views in a month. Thank you mom!

Just kidding, even my mom doesn’t read my blog. But to be fair, she doesn’t know about my blog so that’s an acceptable excuse.

Even though I have posted more than last month, this one is actually under target as well. I had to cut down on content because for some reason exams are “more important”. At least that’s what everybody says. People are ridiculous. But I have a lot of content planned for July, and I plan to use the summer to get a good step ahead of my schedule.

Related post: My Stats Are Down. Should I Be Disappointed? | May Blog Report

June Blog Traffic Sources

There’s two things that really jump out to me, looking at my traffic sources.

Well three, because what are the odds of search traffic being exactly the same again? Maybe not that crazy since my DA (domain authority) haven’t gone up from 30 after Moz’ latest update.

The traffic bumps that really stands out, are Pinterest and StumpleUpon, which I will get to in the next section:

Related post: How I Got Over 10K Views in April | Blog Report

What I did different this month

• Pinterest: At the beginning of the month I spend hours on Pinterest looking for group boards to join. Which can frustrating, because most group board managers never get back to you (or maybe they’re just ignoring me). And I tweaked my BoardBooster settings to post more of my original content to group boards. Which as you can see, nearly quadrupled my traffic! And it’s not from a single pin going viral, I was just getting more traffic from my pins overall – and I haven’t even gotten around to scheduling pins for the newest group boards.
• StumpleUpon: I’ve never used StumpleUpon before, but I was sick one day and stumpled over somebody talking about it in a blogging FB-group. So I  thought, why not?And signed up. And stumpled (is that even a verb?) some of my old posts plus lots of other posts SU suggested, in a ratio of about 1:10 because that’s what seems best, according to some bloggers. The outcome: And immediate traffic spike. To my surprise, Recovery Is Not a Straight Line – Thoughts From Therapy did very well and get a few thousand views in a couple of days.
• Newsletter: You may or may not notice when you get to the bottom of this post that I’ve replaced the newsletter sign-up form with my instagram feed. After a few months of trying to grow my list – because that’s what all the experts say is the most important thing ever. But after seeing how few open my newsletters, and talking to some people on Twitter, I’ve come to the conclusion that my readers are not into email. And I get it! I personally receive newsletters regularly from two bloggers. Yes, just two. But what I do love is Instagram so it makes more sense for me to promote that.
• Pretty share buttons: Okay, they might have been there last month too, because I can’t exactly remember when I installed them. I’m now using the Social Warfare-plugin*, after trying at least 10 different ones. I find it superior because
  • You can set a custom Pinterest image + text, instead of just using the featured image as most plugins does.
  • It’s able to count Twitter share counts – something most applications doesn’t do either since Twitter updated their API.
  • It shows the total number of shares, even if you change your url. This was the selling point for me, as I changed my permalink structure when I went self-hosted – and otherwise all the repins I receive on my old wouldn’t be counted, as it’s impossible to change all links on my pins.
  • And it let’s you see how many times a post has been shared in the post overview, which is how I could include the ‘Most shared posts’ section above.
• I got an award: Given, this wasn’t something I personally did. But it did affect my traffic a bit, and even more so my Instagram – and the best thing of all, it’s given me the opportunity to connect with some talented health bloggers, that I hope to collaborate with in the future.

I’ve also made some tough choices, and narrowed down my focus. I’ve become more aware of what goals I want to use my time and energy on. More on that next week, when I’m catching up on my blogging goals.

I won’t be surprised if my stats dips down again next month – it is after all summer, and it’s time to be outside!! I say as I look outside the window, feeling sorry for my pigeon neighbours that must be drowning in the pouring rain.

But I’m motivated as ever to blog, so that’s not going to get me down!

Do you use StumpleUpon? What’s your experience? Let me know in the comments!

Since you made it to the end, you may as well follow me on Instagram – but their algorithm is a bit of a mystery, so you can sign up to the newsletter to not miss out on the best posts! ✨