I've always thought of September as one of those odd sort of in-between months. It's not exactly Summer anymore, but the weather isn't quite Fall either. Then this year decided to surprise us with snow! It's like September is a preparation for the cooler days of Autumn and long Winter days to come. For the blog, it has been an exciting month of growth!
As always, my life continues to change at a rate even I can barely keep up with. I've finished one of my part-time jobs and moved on to another where I will hopefully be finding out a date for full-time employment sometime this week. Once that happens, I will be able to begin the process of finding and buying my first home! With all that personal change, I'm sure the lilmissbearpaw blog will continue to undergo great changes as well over the next several months. So if you like something I'm doing, please let me know in the comments so I'll be sure to keep it around!
Month in Review
Without further ado, here is this month's growth in review! 😜
Website
Getting rid of the pop-up last month was absolutely the right decision. We saw the same number of new subscribers this month and we drastically decreased the bounce rate for the first time since switching to WIX. Welcome to our three newcomers, I'm so excited to have you here!
In September I had 61 visits to the website, this is a humble 5% improvement from last month. The even sad news is that 30 were unique visitors which is a 21% decrease from last month. Part of this is good because it means those of you already enjoying the website are coming back for more and sticking around longer. The sad part of it is that we're not reaching enough new eyes to be increasing our rate of new subscribers. Members, this is where you could become a part of the blog's growth and journey, by sharing your favorite posts or tips that have helped you!
My favorite part this month is that the bounce rate decreased by 43%!
I am still working on that pillar page, however, with some of the training that I've been doing for my new job, there are few other priorities I've realized need attention first if we're going to be the best that we can be. Be patient with me, once it's ready, you'll be the first to know!
This month has been disappointing and exciting all at the same time for Facebook. First is that if you've logged on to the app on your PC recently you've probably noticed that Facebook has gotten a new look, which also means changes on the back end that can be both helpful and frustrating to Creators just trying to keep up.
This month we're down 5% in reach and 35% in engagement. What is interesting about this is that our reach has slowed its descent to zero from a terrifying 84% plummet last month. However, engagement continued to decline at about the same depressing rate.
Now for the exciting part! We finally reached 100 followers! This growth at the end of the month has me really excited for the future. One thing I noticed is that I got a few more stories up this month and the engagement there was really good, maybe that is where the key to our future growth lies. Either way, I'm thankful to be sharing this journey with you!
I continue to enjoy Instagram as one of my favorite platforms. One of the interesting developments this month was a new push on the app to convert personal pages, if you're a creator, to a hybrid business page. This means that I can continue to post on my personal Instagram as usual, but will have access to the same stats I view on the lilmissbearpaw page. This is useful because I have a bit of a larger audience on my personal page and also promote my travels/blog adventures there regularly.
I've said it before and I'm sure I will say it again, I get the most engagement and growth through Instagram but it just doesn't see the same click-through rate as Facebook. Maybe one of these days, they will actually allow links in the post and I can knock my blog promotion out of the ballpark!
We now have 112 followers with increasing reach and engagement every week. Just this last week alone the page had 451 impressions! Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are my new highest engaging days, which isn't surprising considering that they are when I most consistently post new blog content. As I work to complete an everyday post-challenge this next month, it will be interesting to see how those days realign.
I know this post is probably not the most interesting, however, I want it to really say two things: I couldn't do this without you and keep me accountable. I need your encouragement and support to continue to grow as a creator!
You can engage with the blog most directly by becoming a member. I value your opinion and your input on my content. Being a member means you will receive extra benefits like being the first notified when a new post drops, behind the scenes stories in my monthly newsletter, the shared gallery, and more as the blog continues to grow.
How would you like me to improve? Are there any specific topics you would like to see me cover? Are there any places you would like me to visit or review?
Thank you, fellow adventurers! You can follow the lilmissbearpaw blog page on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @lilmissbearpaw for sneak peeks into upcoming posts and my adventures. This will also be a great place to share your own adventures!