Dec 10, 2018
Reflecting on 2 years of blogging
After nearly 24 months on Medium, I took a closer look at my blog stats in an effort to refine my future posts. Can my findings help you?
MY BLOG OVERVIEW
I try to write a monthly post about my creative endeavors and design-related topics that I am passionate about. So, let’s get to it! A quick overview of my stats can be seen below.*
I have a rather small sample size of work and my level of success has varied drastically with each post. Here’s a post timeline along with views and reads** data:
As you can see, things started very slowly in 2017, then there was a large spike of activity in November (which necessitated a reformatting of the chart for that month). The success of this post showed me the importance of sharing links to your content in the places where your potential audience gathers. I have had success when I share content on Reddit and designernews.co.
MY MOST POPULAR POST
In November 2017, I completed a case study that provided details of my efforts to redesign my personal logo. The post appeared on webdesignernews.com and was shared in their daily email newsletter. A few months later, the post was translated for a Japanese audience!
The chart below demonstrates how the views of this post contributed heavily to my total blog views.
The post received 3,330 views in a single day (a personal best)! Unlike many of my other posts, this case study also received numerous comments.
Self-improvement is a popular topic on Medium and I think that details of my efforts to re-approach and improve my logo design were appealing to readers.
OTHER ACTIVITY
Of my 20 posts, 8 had over 1,000 views. Conversely, I had 5 posts with less than 100 views. Yikes!
Here are some additional details as to how my other blog posts have fared:
SHORT AND SWEET?
Posts that can be read in under 5 minutes had a better read ratio than posts that were estimated to take 5 minutes or more to read.
READER INTERESTS
When my post has enough reader data, Medium provides estimated “reader interest” metrics. This data can help me determine if I’m reaching my intended audience:
Posts that appealed to this group received over 24,000 views!
Posts that diverged sharply from the interests listed above did not perform as well. For example, I shared a personal story about a childhood visit to an arcade which, as of November 2018, has only 35 total views.
MUTUALISTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Through Medium, you can submit relevant posts to publishers who will consider sharing your content with their audience. I have been fortunate enough to have my content shared by some great publications with large and engaged audiences:
I was extremely pumped when CSS-Tricks shared my CSS animation tutorial post!
* Data as of 11/20/18. Does not include additional views from RSS readers, Facebook Instant Articles, and AMP.
** Reads data is an estimate of the number of readers who read your entire post.
