August 2015 Blog Report // Behind the Blog

This is the third of my monthly blog reports, which shows some insights into what goes on behind-the-scenes here at Sara Laughed! If you’d like to read July’s report, click here. As for August, here’s what went on behind the blog last month, and what changed as a result.

August was a pretty overwhelming month for me, in several different ways! I had lots going on, with a full-time job and then full-time training for an on-campus position. I didn’t have a single day off with the exception of weekends, so I didn’t spend much time blogging, and you can tell from my posts! This blog is an honest space, though, so I’m just as willing and excited to share August’s results with you as I am for any other month. Let’s take a look.

Blog Posts

I only wrote seven blog posts in August, bringing my monthly tally down by 6! That’s quite a significant drop, but August is always a busy month for me, so I don’t mind the drop. I’m hoping to blog more regularly now that I am back at school. My favorite post in August was my “Dress for an Education” announcement, discussing the charity challenge I’m doing this month and sharing some information about one of my favorite charities, Camfed. I also really loved writing my post “What I’m Not,” because it felt very real and raw, and let me express some feelings that I had been carrying around for a while.

The Blog

No major changes to the blog this month! I didn’t make any big edits in design, but I did do something new and exciting for me – Sara Laughed now has an intern! She is a wonderful young woman with an interest in music and social media, and she will be helping me with managing Sara Laughed’s online presence through Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I’m very excited about the additional help and I look forward to seeing how it will help the blog grow!

Social Media

With the exception of the help of my intern, I haven’t focused much on social media in August. I did see moderate growth on Twitter, and I passed the 1000 followers mark on Pinterest! My Tumblr account continues to grow as the master list of study posts gets passed around.

Guest Posts and Freelancing

Again, I didn’t work on this during August – too much other stuff going on! You can see in my goals below that this is an area I’d like to expand on in the coming month.

Results

Here are my statistics for the month of August:

Lots of growth, but you can see that there is a downward trend over the course of the month as I posted less often. My users increased by 24,000 readers this month, my page views are up by 57,000, and I’m almost at 100,000 readers! Unfortunately, readers are staying on my site for a little less time than they were last month; I expect that this is because I have been updating less frequently, meaning that people are checking my front page, seeing no new content, and then peacing out! I’ll try to prevent that from happening this month by posting more often.

As usual, Pinterest and Tumblr are the biggest drivers of my traffic, then Facebook. I’ve also seen a big spike in referrals from Google, and noticed that my blog is now the top result for the search “how to stay organized in college,” “how to be organized in college,” and “college organization.” Finally, I saw some referrals from the blogs Dani Dearest and Mostly Morgan, as well as the website HelloGiggles, for whom I wrote a freelance piece back in February.

What’s next?

No big announcements or releases coming up in September! Instead, I’d like to focus on returning to blogging in general and writing more often. I also have plenty of personal goals to focus on this month, and balancing those with blogging will be a challenge for me (though one I can handle with proper time-management!).

If I had to identify any blogging goals in September, they would be two-fold. The first would be to write a new blog post two to three times a week, to get back into my original posting schedule. The second would be to submit a few new freelance or guest post pieces. I feel that these definitely broaden my audience in the long-term, but they are also really fun to do! I hope you enjoy them too!

Feedback

This blog is just as much about you and your experience as it is about mine. If you have any suggestions for what you’d like to see in the “behind the blog” series (like financial insights, a better breakdown of my traffic, or fewer statistics), please let me know! You can comment below or send me an email at sara@saralaughed.com.