Blogging by the Numbers | Social Media & Email Subscriber Growth – July 2018

Blogging by the Numbers | Social Media & Email Subscriber Growth – July 2018

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In a sense, you sacrifice yourself by making your numbers public. The same can be said about public corporations in comparison to private companies, especially in more innovative fields. For example, a company like Tesla is expected to generate profit for shareholders instead of focusing solely on innovation.

The same goes for the blog traffic and social media reports. There are months that seem to take a step backwards, which could be viewed as unsuccessful. However, publishing these reports provides the opportunity for closer examination.

Since the last report was published on May 29, 2018, social media follower growth has been excellent, especially Pinterest. Twitter started off slow but ended up growing by nearly 40 followers.

The only downside during the period was email subscribers. But this led to the realization of how important it is to focus on one specific topic. Prior to the May 29th report, email subscribers were increasing even though I wasn’t publishing as much. I was basically just publishing two dividend income related posts per month. When I began publishing recurring goal-setting posts, blog traffic reports, and social media updates again, unfortunately, a few subscribers unsubscribed. Ultimately those subscribers preferred dividend income updates which is understandable—dividend income updates are my favourite posts too! In the end, it helped me realize the importance of being clear and consistent with content.

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Social Media Growth

**As of July 17, 2018**

Twitter —  2,199 followers (Up 39 followers | 1.81% increase compared to May 29, 2018)

Pinterest —  606 followers (Up 43 | 7.64% increase compared to May 29, 2018)

Google+ — 17 followers (No change | compared to May 29, 2018)

Total social media followers —2,822 (Up 82)

E-Mail Subscriber Growth – July 2018

Email subscribers — 50 (Down 2 compared to May 29, 2018)

Total social media followers and subscribers — 2,872 (Up 80)

Analysis of Social Media & E-Mail Subscription Growth – July 2018

As alluded to above, the social media channels have been increasing over the past few months. Twitter followers increased by 1.81% and Pinterest followers increased by 7.64%, which I was especially proud of.

If you recall back to the blogging goals for 2018, I set the Pinterest target at 500 followers. Now, just 7 months into the year, the RTC Pinterest channel surpassed 600 followers. 

To achieve the 7.64% rate of growth, I have been pinning consistently, and I’ve been pinning in sets of 3. I started pinning in sets of 3 because it appealed to me aesthetically. But then it increased my monthly Pinterest views to 8.8k, so I stuck with it. 

In addition, I experienced pinning success with my mid year personal finance review post. That post has done well overall, though. The pin received 1.5k impressions and 20 saves, which is one of the most successful pins yet. Using hashtags on Pinterest works, and the Pinterest image itself is of the utmost importance.

Although there are many impressive pins out there, it’s cool that mine are able to gain traction because I use my own images, designs, and colours. Hopefully the colours and original photos standout as a personal style.

Style is the answer to everything. – Charles Bukowski

Moreover on Pinterest, most of my success can be attributed to my Financial Independence group board. It’s become quite the group board now! There are now 29 different contributors from blogs around the world. Plus, a couple of them are pretty well known around the personal finance blogging community. It’s an honour.

In regards to Twitter, the growth started off extremely slow. In fact followers dropped shortly after publishing the prior report. Follower growth was stagnant for a while, to be honest. As such, I added more descriptive words to the RTC Twitter profile and it has seemingly helped.

Blogging by the Numbers | Concluding Thoughts

For the record, I don’t publish social media numbers for clout or proof of concept. It’s not because I think it’s cool to have a bunch of followers. The purpose is to document the process of blogging and how small steps can lead to big results over long periods of time.

Just the other evening, I was editing old content and came across a social media update from 2016. It was sort of shocking to realize that the RTC Twitter profile had less than 400 followers at the time. The goal for that month was to reach 470 followers. It was like reading a website marketer’s diary in hindsight.

Ultimately, it was a successful month of building the RTC community (can I say that?). I say that because blogging and dividend investing is a 10 year plus target. I’m going to keep building around the dividend income updates and financial independence theme for years to come. If I can continue to produce quality content, the community will continue to grow and one day I’ll be able to blog full-time.

Since I have the opportunity to provide clarity on the blog, the primary focus is reaching financial independence through dividend investing. The long term goal is to blog and invest full time. This blog documents the journey and publishes content on the following topics:

Dividend Investing | Blogging | Personal Finance | Personal Development

If you’re into blogging type shit, or if you want to see how large my dividend income payments will eventually become, please subscribe below to receive content updates.