Last month, I started a new featured column that strictly focuses on the specific actions and steps to expanding our brand’s reach and engagement, online and offline.
I mentioned in my post last month that while the popular “Blogging Income Report” posts that you see all over Pinterest are incredibly helpful in seeing how other bloggers are bringing in income through affiliate programs, adds, and promotions…ect. But for those of us who are newer to the blogging community, if we don’t have the traffic then it doesn’t matter how many affiliate programs we set up, we’ll probably never see a penny.
I also want to make sure that before we jump into any statistics or numbers I make sure to address that numbers are only that; numbers. They mean absolutely nothing if we’re not getting the engagement we need to really start building traction behind our brand.
While it is important to understand how our content is being received, we also need to remember to never let our stats get in the way of our dreams. These posts are not only about paying attention to the numbers but inspiring ourselves to try new things, step out side of the box, and come up with something incredibly original as we build our creative communities around our brands.
What can we do differently that might not only surprise our community but motivate them to engage with our content? What big audacious goals have we had up on a pedestal forever that we are finally ready to test out? Which blogs have we always wanted to guest post for but have always been too afraid to approach the blogger? It’s time to make these ideas a reality.
Here’s the place to dream, scheme, and track what’s working from what’s not.
Each month, I’ll be sharing my own brand stats and engagement efforts and evaluating what worked from what didn’t. I invite you to join along and start tracking your own brand’s engagement and expansion and share your thoughts or strategies with the rest of us in the comments below.
Ohh, and don’t forget, to jump over to my first Brand Expansion post and download your own FREE Brand Stat Tracker and Goal setting worksheets so you too and start expanding and elevating your brand’s engagement with us.
BRAND EXPANSION
Monthly Brand Engagement Report | April 2015
How to increase your brands engagement and traffic through goal setting, stat tracking, and retracing our steps so we can recognize and celebrate all our little wins.
April was a crazy busy month for me. I had a number of exciting new opportunities and amazing help from some of my favorite boss ladies that inspired a huge spike in my brand’s traffic and engagement.
AUDIENCE OVERVIEW + ENGAGEMENT
Compared to March, my sessions, page views, and users all went up an even 13%. My average session duration went up two seconds from 42 to 44, and my bounce rate went down from 5.08% to 4.95%. It only went down slightly, but a low bounce rate is great and every little percent counts.
According to the goals I set for April, I wanted to lengthen my average session duration by 5 seconds so 2 seconds was’t quite there but definitely a step forward. I also wanted to double my unique visitors (users) total but I didn’t get quite as close on that one with 1743 users in March and 1973 in April. That will again be a goal of mine and I’ll need to set some action steps to make more progress on that for May.
TRAFFIC ACQUISITION
SOCIAL CIRCUITS
A huge part of my brand expansion relies on my social media engagement. This last month was full of a number of amazing posts discussing how to best take advantage of your social media efforts and motivate more engagement to your content (check out these amazing posts by Chloe Social, Olyvia Media, and Design Your Own Lovely Blog)
SOCIAL STATS FOR APRIL:
* Focusing on my top 3 social platforms.
Pinterest: March = 944 / April = 1210 | 28% Growth
Facebook: March = 198 / April = 222 | 12% Growth
Twitter: March = 245 / April = 315 | 29% Growth
With content and education at the core of my business, it makes sense that my top 3 social platforms would be ones that support content heavy or content focused posts; Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
TOP TRAFFIC PINS:
Here are my top 10 traffic driving Pinterest Pins. Not necessarily my most pinned, but the ones that most effectively drive traffic to my website.
MY NUMBER 1 PIN
Last month, I went into detail on my number one pin, “The Business Plan” and some potential reasons why it might be so successful, despite being one of my older posts. Again, that post is still the reigning king of my top traffic pins, but there was a much closer second this year that wasn’t a post.
My second most traffic driving pin in April was not from a post, but from a permanent page on my blog, Resources. I have a super detailed resources page dedicated to providing educational resources, free downloads, book references and professionals that I refer to often in order to manage and maintain my online business. I created a pin just for this page and it has been quickly jumping the ranks toward being my most successful pin to date.
Online Business Resources: A collection of my all time favorite tools, tips, products and people. From free downloads, worksheets, workbooks, e-courses, editorial calendars, people, products, and words of wisdom. This is my mega library of creative support that I use to run my online business.
I also have the ability to update this page each month as I find new useful business resources or eCourses. This creates a continuously valuable and growing resource for other bloggers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses looking to organize, streamline, and expand their online business efforts.
Other than my social platforms, my top 3 external referral sources were:
Design Your Own {Lovely} Blog
My monthly Creative Genius Newsletter links
byRegina.com
Last month, I had a random top referral resource from blog.spoonflower.com and I can not for the life of me find out how or where my URL is used that would be driving so much traffic my way, but thank you mysterious referral friend. I appreciate your support!
EMAIL MARKETING
Last month, I set a goal to double my newsletter list and draw attention to the private Facebook Community I manage, The Creative’s Corner, and my new free opt-in workbook “Brandsanity”. I started out April with 134 subscribers and finished out the month with a whopping 300! And I was able to grow my private FB community from 67 members to 152 brilliant entrepreneurs!
Want to find out how I did that? Keep reading, I promise to share all my secrets
As for my campaign stats, I launched my first ever FREE 60+ page workbook Brandsanity to my newsletter subscribers last month yielding a successful open rate of 64.3% and a click rate of 40% from that. At the time of my email campaign, I had only 140 subscribers on my list. It will be very interesting to see if I can maintain these numbers in my May newsletter with the major boost in subscribers.
WHAT DID I DO TO EXPAND MY BRAND
Retracing my steps…
Looking back on my engagement stats from last month, I can track the specific actions I made that promoted my brand’s expansion and user engagement, evaluating what worked, from what didn’t.
BRAND MENTIONS: For those of you who are already subscribed to my monthly Creative Genius Newsletter, you are all too familiar with my incredible private Facebook mastermind community, The Creative’s Corner and all the creative greatness we do over there. Well, thanks to Erika Madden of Olyvia Media and her fantastic post, 9 Smart Facebook Groups For Women Entrepreneurs, Freelancers, and Bloggers, I had a HUGE boost in subscribers interested in the Creatives Corner and joining my amazing creative community and I as we build brands that look, act, sound, and feel just like us all with the power and support of a professional community. (Thank you thank you thank you Erika! You are amazing!)
FREE OPT-IN: I also launched my brand new free subscription opt-in Brandsanity. A 60+ page free workbook, structured like your traditional workout routine, (also named after on – Insanity – ever heard of it? It’s pretty crazy, just like the workbook!) I broke down brand development and brand expansion into a series of targeted “muscle groups”; Cardi-SEO, Core Content, Engagement Intervals, Social Circuits, and Visual Toning. The workbook is free to anyone who subscribes to my monthly newsletter, and then we are working through the workbook together in the Creative’s Corner, holding each other accountable for growth and expansion as we work to get our brands back into shape.Along with Erika’s amazing post, and my new free opt-in, I was able to more than double my list in April. I started out with 134 subscribers and finished out the month with a whopping 300!
GUEST BLOG INTERVIEW: I was honored to be featured in Design Your Own Lovely Blog’s “Meet the Designer” post feature where DYOB’s founder, Marianne, interviewed me from a designers perspective instead of my traditional brand specialists perspective. I had so much fun getting the opportunity to talk about how I integrate both the design and development process into each of my client projects, and sharing my advice on how to create a seamless, engaging, authentic brand that looks, acts, feels, and sounds just like you. Check out that post here.
FREE LIVE WEBINAR: I was so excited to launch my first every live Creative’s Corner Community Hangout featuring fellow CC member, Keizra Tyson Griffin of Vidaluxe Studio as we talked about branding, business, and how to get our brand’s back into shape. I wanted to take my private Facebook community to a new level of engagement and educational opportunities by opening up the floor for members to host their own free talks or community hangouts in the future. You can check out the whole video here.
GUEST POST FOR JHD: I was thrilled to get to welcome the brilliant wordsmith and bosslady, Razwana Wahid of Relentless Movement to my blog to share her tips, tricks, and resources for branding our blogs and businesses through the words we use. The majority of my guest posts are interview focused and I have more of a say in the content, but Raz wrote to me with this post in mind and it was so perfect for last month’s focus of branding our businesses, that I was more than excited to welcome her to my creative community. Definitely check out her guest post “Branding With Words” if you haven’t yet.
GROUP PIN BOARDS: As the self proclaimed Pinoholic that I am, I reached out and joined a few more group Pinterest boards dedicated to branding, business, and entrepreneurial success. Check the out on my Pinterest page and see if it might be a good group board for your to join too.
May’s Brand Expansion Goals + Action Plan
TOP 3 BRAND EXPANSION GOALS FOR MAY
Double my total users (unique visitors) to my blog. I’m shooting for 10,000 visitors by June!
Increase my social platform following and engagement by 20% across all my top platforms.
Create a stronger consistency to my monthly newsletter and build more audience specific exclusive content building the value of being a Creative Genius Newsletter Subscriber other than just Brandsanity and the Creative’s Corner.
What will accomplishing these goals do for my brand?
Doubling my user total will help me reach more individuals looking for brand design and development content and resources to help bring clarity and confidence to their brands and businesses. It will help me understand my target market better since I’ll have a larger pool of creatives to engage with and I’ll be able to better create content to meet their needs.
I genuinely believe that the best way to provide value to my community as well as my self is to bring more experts into our life. Getting social online is a fantastic way to utilize the platforms and meet new people. Pauline of Twelveskip share a fantastic post on how to make new friends with other bloggers and professionals in your niche that I will be testing out myself this month to see how it can help my creative community grow as well as help me expand my own education as a designer and creative coach.
Continuing my online business education by learning from an email marketing master and gaining a greater level of clarity and confidence on the goals I have form my newsletter and subscribers. I’ll be able to better curate my content each month and provide more value for my readers.
ACTION STEPS FOR ACHIEVING MY EXPANSION GOALS
Engage, engage, engage! Get not only my name out there by my brand’s reputation by getting more active across all my top social platforms through Twitter chats, the Social Communities I participate in, and more Creative’s Corner Community Hangouts.
Make a bigger effort to promote my own work through repurposing my core content. In an effort not to feel “spammy” I often under promote my own content, keeping to the daily post on the day of my blog’s content publishing, but I have so much more to offer than just my blog content. I have a huge resource library of content, brand development and design services, and one-on-one brand coaching services available to support my creative community that I don’t often share. I want my community to know that I am here to provide guidance and support for them wherever they are at in their professional journey.
I will be taking advantage of Kirsten Thompson’s brand new eCourse, “An Inbox of Opportunity” to help redesign and develop a stronger monthly newsletter.
Ok, now it’s your turn.
1. Download the FREE monthly engagement goal setter and stat tracker worksheets.
2. Fill out your goals for May and start developing an action strategy for meeting those goals.
3. Share with us in the comments what you are going to do in order to expand your brand this month. What can I do to help you?
As always, if you found this post helpful, please share with your friends and family and let me know if you want to see more posts like this in the future. My goal is always to help empower you to make your professional dreams a reality by providing the best tools and resources available.
See you in the comments.
Sincerely,
Photo Credit: © Stockpic.com
The post Brand Expansion April 2015 | How To Increase Your Brands Engagement appeared first on JULIE HARRIS DESIGN.