August 2016 Traffic Report

September is here and summer is over. This has been an exciting and life-changing summer for me as I bought my first house. Despite being busy with buying a house and moving, I was able to keep my blog not just running but also growing

• While August saw some growth in my blog stats it wasn't as much growth as in July
• Overall my social accounts saw month-over-month growth and I hope to continue the momentum

(This post includes some affiliate links. Should you click an affiliate link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

I share my monthly traffic reports partly to hold myself accountable and help me keep a closer eye on my monthly stats. I’m also doing this in the hopes of helping and encouraging other bloggers who are looking to grow their online presence.

Related read: January 2016 Traffic Report

August 2016 Blog Stats

• Sessions: 3,524 (-0.90%)
• Users: 2,842 (-0.39%)
• Pageviews: 5,474 (+8.81%)
• Pages/Sessions: 1.55 (+9.93%)
• % of New Sessions: 72.45% (-0.26%)
• Bounce Rate: 81.58% (-1.50%)

August 2016 Top 5 Blog Posts

1. Hairlista Castor Oil Challenge Check-in #1
2. My Relaxed Hair Regimen
3. Why You Should Pre-poo Before Washing Your Hair
4. Product Review: Cantu Shea Butter Leave-in Conditioning Repair Cream
5. How I Cross-wrap My Relaxed Hair

August 2016 Top 4 Traffic Drivers

1. Pinterest
2. Google/organic
3. Direct 
4. Facebook

August 2016 Social Media Stats

• Bloglovin: 90 (+5)
• Facebook: 47 (+8)
• Google+: 58 (+0)
• Instagram: 260 (+26)
• Pinterest: 980 (+189)
• Twitter: 327 (+23)
• YouTube: 45 (+4)

How I did with My August Goals

• Grow my pageviews to 5,500 - No

• Increase my Facebook followers to 45 - Yes 

• Grow my Pinterest followers to 1,000 - No

• Increase my Instagram followers to 300 - No

• Grow my Twitter followers to 350 - No

Related read: July 2016 Traffic Report

What worked

Pinterest and BoardBooster
Pinterest continued being a big traffic driver for me. In fact, it drove about 45% of my traffic this month. I think is mostly due to my exceeding my 500 BoardBooster pins for about two weeks. Last month I didn't quite make it to 500 pins so to make sure I reached 500 pins in August I increased the number of pins scheduled to each board. I apparently didn't add correctly because I ended up overshooting my goal of 500 pins by about 250.

To avoid running out of pins with two weeks left in the month I upgraded my subscription from 500 pins to 1,000. This cost me an extra $1.85 and I didn't lose any momentum. So it was worth it.

With this surge in pins, you would think that I would have met my goal of 1,000 followers. Towards the end of the month, I slacked off on sourcing pins for all of my boards and ended up pinning less for a few days.

Related read: How To Easily Manage And Boost Your Pinterest Performance

What sort of worked

Pre-scheduling my social posts
Part of the reason I didn't hit my social media goals is that I didn't post enough on them. And I didn't post enough because I didn't stick to pre-scheduling my posts. I try to pre-schedule the majority of my social media posts because it allows me to be active throughout the day without having to be on social media all day.

I did do a decent job with Instagram and Facebook at the beginning of the month which is evident in having a decent amount of traffic coming from Facebook and Instagram. I probably would have had more traffic from both if I hadn't slacked off during the second half of the month. The opposite was true for Twitter. I slacked off at the beginning of the month and picked up during the second half. Pinterest was the only social account where I was consistent with pre-scheduling.

Promoting my social accounts
While I didn't hit my goals this month I did see some decent growth across my social accounts. Some of this can be attributed to promoting my social accounts. I promoted my Facebook Page in multiple ways in a P.S. in my blog posts, in tweets, and on Instagram which helped me reach a net of 47 followers. This surpassed my August goal. I also promoted my Pinterest profile in some of my tweets.

My September Goals

• Grow my pageviews to 6,000. I didn't reach my goal in August of 5,500 page views, but I came close. If I had done more blog promotion I may have reached my goal. To make it to 6,000 pageviews I'll be doing constant promotion in some Facebook groups and my social accounts.

• Grow my Pinterest followers to 1,100. BoardBooster will help me achieve this, but I'll need to work hard on making sure I've sourced enough pins for each board to make it through the month.

• Post on Facebook 1-2 times a day. I'll be leveraging Hootsuite to help me post on my Facebook page. My goal is to have at least one post to be content from my blog.

• Post every day on Twitter. I'll continue using Hootsuite to pre-schedule my tweets and have been able to tweet a lot during the first few days of September.

• Post on Instagram at least once a day. So far I've been doing this the last couple of days.