Starting up a blog can be good for a variety of reasons. Whether you’re running a business of your own or not, blogging allows you to create easily shareable content that can gather people together under an audience umbrella.
And when people come to your website to read up on what you’ve got to say and the experience you want to share, you can create a very understanding and engaged community. That’s great for flexing your creative muscles, uplifting your mental health, and you can also monetise your blog to pull in a bit more income!
But with all these potential benefits on your plate, blogging can be a tricky game. It’s a modern art form that people know and love, but seeing as it’s so accessible and requires some digital strategy, your content can be easily drowned out.
Becoming a blogger can involve a lot of worry about this, and that’s why you should know the signs that your blog is a success and doing exactly what you want it to. Here are a few to dig your teeth into.
You Have Both Unique and Returning Visitors
You’ve got a lot of unique visitors to your website, a.k.a., users who are finding you for the first time. Great – that means people are seeing your blog link in a place that’s both easily accessible and relevant to them.
But when you look down the columns in your analytic dashboard, you’re seeing that there’s a lot of returning visitors as well. Fantastic! That means people have visited you before, and what they read was so good and relatable to them that they’ve come back for more.
Of course, being able to tell the difference between these users will depend on how amenable that user is to your website’s cookies. But more people tend to click that agree button on the banner than not, so you should be able to see a good bit of data around this in your website analytics.
And if it turns out that you’ve got a strong amount of these two types of visitor, take some time to be proud of yourself. You’ve clearly struck a balance between creating content that appeals to all and creating content that your pre-established audience can enjoy. You’ve not trapped yourself in either box, and that happens by accident more times than you’d believe!
You’ve Had Quite a Lot of Email Signups
If you’ve been running a newsletter since your blog first began, take a look now and count through how many people have signed up to it. Whilst you’re there, what do you notice about these numbers?
You might see that whilst the growth was slow at first, there’s been double the amount of signups in the past 3 months. You may notice that your newsletter has doubled or even tripled in size since you first set it up. You may even notice that you’re getting at least one to two new signups per day.
These are all great signs. People are coming to your blog, and they’re liking what they see so much that they’re signing up for that content to be sent straight to them. Seeing as you’re getting new signups every single time, it’s another sign that you’re getting a high amount of unique visitors as well.
Your Analytics Say People are Coming From Social Media
Whether you share your blog posts on social media or not, check your analytics to see how many people are coming from links shared on social platforms. If you find that there’s a high amount of inbound links from places like Facebook, Instagram, or even Youtube, it’s a sign that your content has found a market on social media as well.
Maybe you’re getting some traction from people regularly sharing your posts to their stories for others to see? Maybe a well known influencer has created content using your post as a source and has linked to you? No matter how these shares are happening, they are happening, and your audience is growing as a result.
So maybe it’s time to get in on the action if you haven’t already? Start using a social media profile to share your content. This way you can get even more traffic driven back to your site.
You’re Running Out of Things to Talk About
This doesn’t sound like a sign of a successful blog when you take it at face value, but it can be a sneaky signal to be proud of. Indeed, if you’re able to put out enough content to get to a point where you need new blog topic ideas, you may have found yourself an audience who is hungry for more.
When your audience wants more, it’s best to deliver that to them! Take your time researching potential ideas, of course, but try to branch out a little and start to borrow from more elements within your niche.
You can also ask your audience directly about what they want to hear from you. If you’re someone who’s not afraid to share your opinions, for example, your audience may want to know more about your takes on things you’ve never touched on before.
Remember, it’s best not to rush out new content that’s only tangentially related to what you usually talk about. What was supposed to be a new and interesting direction may be taken by your audience as a lazy attempt at staying relevant. Quality over quantity is always the best thing for a blog to be successful, so take your time and structure your ideas well!
Your Blog Could Be More Successful Than You Know!
So, is your blog a bit more successful than you think it is? Probably! Make sure you dig deep into the metrics above and consider what they mean for you. Even when something seems like a bad thing, there could be a positive side to it. Keep this in mind when approaching your blogging strategy, and then make sure you celebrate the little things along the way!
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