Some exciting things happened this February. The most exciting was welcoming our newest little bundle, Lainey, into the world. She is just perfect, and we have been loving every minute. Libby is getting adjusted to her new role as a big sister.
As for blogging, my February goal was to keep up the momentum while having a new baby and a two-year-old. The easiest way I found to do this, time blocking and KISS (keep it simple stupid).
I know in my January Blog Report I mentioned doing these reports on the 15th of the month, but I changed my mind. They just don’t flow as freely in the middle of the month.
To be the most beneficial, it makes more sense to do an end of the month wrap up.
This post contains affiliate links.
February Continue to Increase Traffic
The past six months has been spent growing traffic and creating even better content. It’s so exciting when you are blogger and you see start to see your efforts paying off. For me this is seeing readers engaging more with my content. It’s so rewarding to see a post that has an average read time of 7+minutes.
Blogging can sometimes seem like there is no end goal.
The best return on investment for me has been using a tailwind and manual pinning for a Pinterest strategy.
I just hit one million Pinterest profile views. Yay!
About once a month or so I like to look for new group boards to join. I am a fan of more is more when it comes to group boards. More boards means more places to share posts and pins.
To organize my boards, I keep running lists in Tailwind. It makes it easy to schedule pins to the right boards without scrolling through 50+ group boards for each pin being added.
Hitting over 25K sessions last month also allowed me to switch advertisers from Google AdSense to Mediavine. What’s nice about Mediavine is they place all of the ads for you. There is no need to manually place ads. I have only been live for three days now, but there is a 2-3x increase in revenue.
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Celebrating the small successes
Celebrating the small successes has made all of the difference in my blogging journey. Before if I went from 2000 monthly page views to 4000 monthly page views, I wouldn’t think much of it.
Instead of being motivated from the month to month growth, I was unhappy that I wasn’t “killing it” like many other successful bloggers.
I reached a point where I decided to mentally start over. I wrote a post about it that will be coming out sometime next week.
When I did this, I decided to track my stats, in Excel. Instead of being bummed about not being an instant success, I continued to work on improving my content, my pins, and staying focused on my monthly goals I set.
Here is a snapshot of the stats I track. My current focus of “traffic,” has been improving month over month. Now, I just need to commit to a Facebook and Instagram strategy, because I currently do nothing. 🙂
Here is a screen shot of my Excel chart, I make it pretty so it’s fun to update.
3 Awesome New Plugins
Plugins are a bloggers best friend. Well plugins and Pinterest. This month I added three new plugins I just had to share.
Social Warfare: I was looking for the perfect social plugin. Admittedly, previous plugins were not working, or you had to pay for them. After trying a few, Social Warfare really nailed it. They allow for free sharing on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Stumble upon.
MiloTree: This plugin is $9.00 a month and sends a little pop-up on your site to follow your social media accounts. I am currently not updating my Facebook and Instagram consistently to get the full benefits of growth.
People are more likely going to follow social media accounts that already have a following. Organically gaining followers is something I will focus on later this year.
For a lifestyle blogger or a blogger looking to improve social media presence, this is a pretty effortless way to do it.
Yuzo – Related Posts: This is a free plugin that puts related posts at the bottom of your posts. You can use thumbnails or text.
While my theme, includes this as a feature, it was not to my liking. The thumbnails are just too small.
This is an awesome plugin that I never hear talked about..
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7 secrets to becoming a mom blogger superstar
Mentally Starting Over
A lot of time for February has been spent on my journey of mentally starting over. I am continuting to experiment with affiliate strategies and learning other ways to monetize a lifestyle blog.
Switching to Mediavine and manually removing old Google ads was my big goal for February. March will be spent upgrading content and images and connecting with my email list.
I am also on the lookout for a NEW layout. I am pretty much settled on the Genesis framework. After spending money on two themes, I FINALLY have a good idea of what I want in a theme. I have to say I am definitely a hands-on learner! How about you?
What are your big goals for March? Do you ever feel like you are ready to mentally start over with your blog?
Join me over coffee with household tips, money savings and holiday fun.
I’m Chanele. Housewife, Mama, and Chief of Household Management. I love charm, simplicity, and getting organized.
I‘m always on the hunt for inspiration
and love the creative process. All of the tips I share are for busy moms managing a household and family.
Please join me in making magic, molding memories & managing a household.
