Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Progress Report: All the Good (and Bad) Numbers

image from open clipart.org by Firkin


Twitter Numbers 

Per Twitter Analytics: I've been active on Twitter 18 days and have 192 tweets.  I've had 483 profile visits, gained 97 new followers, and 36 mentions.

My engagement averages about 2% which is an increase from my 1.5% last week.  That engagement averages about 1 link click per day, 2 RT a day, 11 likes, and 1 reply per day.

What does this tell me?  First my follow increase seems strong.  20% of everyone who checks out my profile follows.  This suggests I'm doing well finding relevant quality content to retweet and I'm sorting it well with the Hashtag system to direct my Tweets to the right people at the right time.

I'm on track to gain 100 followers every month.  Remember my following count when I reactivated was 347.  My following has grown 22% in 18 days and that's a lot.

I'm midrange active on Twitter.  I have 5 planned posts a day and everything else is impulsive gravy.  What takes off is a mix of planned posts and impulsive ones.  It averages out to 10 ish posts a day.  They debate the life span of a Tweet but it seems to range between 8-30 minutes.  At the most generous range, I should post twice an hour.  I'd NEED to buy a subscription to a Tweet scheduler to achieve this without going crazy.  I'm looking different options, but I would like 30 days of Twitter before investing.  More details on schedulers I looked at coming.

As a writer and blogger, my link clicks are terrible.  If I can't entice people to check out the posts with interesting titles and snippets, then I need to post links more often to make up for the low conversation.  I'm not comfortable doing that just yet because I feel like my blogs need more evergreen content before I dive into more aggressive self promotion.

General Clean up notes: I've cleared all inactive accounts from my Twitter feed.  Will address again in thirty days.  My following to followers ratio improved, but not in an "ideal" range yet.  I keep telling myself it won't matter once I break 1k, but I've got months before that happens.

Blogs:

The North Alabama Writers' Group blog is drowning in spam.  It's made me rethink everything I thought about how to judge a blog's success.  There was a time where a lot of comments on a blog amazed me, now I know that comments =/= traffic.  Our all time highest view rate is still 19 views and we're not even averaging 3 people visiting a day.  

 It's frustrating because we helpful content like the recent release of Calls for Submission in September but we also have reflective pieces like "Creating Aliens" by Christopher M. Palmer.  We even have crossover pieces like "What's in a Name—A Name I stole from Another Blog!" where I discuss my personal struggle to name characters and places WHILE ALSO offering resources to help other's find good names for their characters/places.

This blog's early numbers success has slumped a little.  It tells me posting on Tell All Tuesday, is very important to driving my traffic.  Good news, there is traffic.  Bad news, it's not worth talking about.

Unlike The North Alabama Writers' Group Blog, I know this blog doesn't have a lot of added value yet or "evergreen" blog fodder.  I am working on adding more.  I have scheduled posts that should improve traffic.

Writing Projects 

I've written more of the second/third/final draft of my novel Follow Me: Tatter Veils.  All forward motion is exciting.  I love this book more than I can express.

I've continued rearranging "Comes in Threes" and when I'm done with this short, I'm moving on to "1000 Words" (which will be 1000 words), and then I want to write one more flash.  Zach challenged me to write 3 flash pieces this week, and I'd like to have three in hand.  I'm toying with a step counter story called "The Tracker" or a reverse mortgage story that doesn't have a name.  All the ideas are sad and bittersweet.

Random Notes: 

My Goodreads reviews are up to date.  I'm half way through the next book on the list and hoping to finish reading/reviewing this week.

I have plenty ideas for the blog and hope to batch those together with the research and link work on Wed.

Batching is helpful, but it doesn't maximize efficiency as well as I'd thought.  For example, to get a sense of accomplishment from the work I need to write, edit, add links, and schedule each post before moving on to the next "job".   In an ideal batching scenario, I'd write all the blog rough drafts, then edit several posts, then place all the links for these posts together, and then find all the pictures.  I can't group the tasks that well yet.  Besides, that much editing all at once is exhausting.  Still there are benefits.  Being in "blog" mode increases speed of writing multiple posts.

Thanks for reading my update, tell me about how your own campaigns are going!  Are you seeing the growth you'd like on social media or on your blog?  What are you doing to achieve that growth?  Talk to me.

Want to see more related to this post?  See how far I've come from Aug 29th or earlier on Aug 21st.  

What's my strategy on Twitter?  Here's a post on the 8 Step Twitter Plan

Looking for the Larger Picture Check out Why a Twitter Campaign and Why a Blog at All


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