Better late than never, right? I promised I’d update you all every few months on our 2018 goals for For the Sake of Good Taste.  While I’d hoped to have 2018 Goals Check-In #1 posted weeks ago, I’m still excited to share our progress (and improve it even further going forward!).

Quadruple our traffic

Personal issues and my final semester of undergrad lowered our stats in March, April, and May but things have already picked up dramatically!

Numerically, progress is there, though slow:

Sessions:

Goal: 6,500

Current: 1,408

Percent of Progress: 22%

Users:

Goal: 5,250

Current: 1,151

Percent of Progress: 22%

Page views:

Goal: 26,000

Current: 3,383

Percent of Progress: 13%

However, a comparison to this time last year is rather inspiring!

Our 1 January – 18 July stats from 2017 vs. 2018, as of this writing:

We’re more than on track to meet this goal, if not exceed it, though we do need to work on retention (more on that below).

In fact, 2018 has exceeded the equivalent period prior, despite the months of limited activity!

Increase our retention

Unfortunately, this one’s actually dropped a bit!  I’m hoping that the work I’m putting into our email list (read more below!) will help this, too.

Feature two guest posts

So far, we’ve had one guest post, Generic vs. Brand Name by Amanda of The Happy Arkansan.  I absolutely loved working with Amanda!

We’ve also got another guest post coming to you on Tuesday!

Here’s that upcoming one, as promised!  

That means we’ve reached this goal! Cue the happy dance!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to feature more of my fellow bloggers! We’ll gladly take more guest posts as the year goes on!

ARE YOU A BLOGGER WITH AN IDEA YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE ON FOR THE SAKE OF GOOD TASTE?  SHOOT US AN EMAIL!

Publish one post a week

Again, those few weeks of unrelated issues complicated things. But with this post, we’re at 22 posts (that count under my original parameters for this goal) for 2018! Not too bad out of 29 weeks, all things considered. A few more weeks with more than one post (like our new monthly favourites series!) and we’ll be back on track in no time.

Launch our veganism course

I haven’t made the progress I’d have liked to on the course, but it’s still moving forward! However, I’m considering launching it in conjunction with this year’s 12 Days of Blogmas! That being said, I’ll still be preparing for the launch throughout 2018, though it will launch a few days after.  I plan to have everything ready before the holidays!

MAKE SURE YOU’VE SIGNED UP FOR OUR EMAIL UPDATES TO BE THE FIRST TO KNOW WHEN OUR COURSE LAUNCHES! YOU’LL EVEN GET SOME EXCLUSIVE FREEBIES ALONG THE WAY!

Build our email list

This is probably the least successful of these goals so far, but there’s still time! Be sure to sign up at the link just above to help us reach this goal (and to snag some exclusive freebies for yourself!). Not convinced? Learn more here.

Our numbers have dropped slightly as we lost a few subscribers after the GDPR update. But it’s okay – we’re focusing on building up the list going forward and it’ll improve without a doubt!

Work with two brands

So far, we’ve got one sponsored post this year, our Self-Care Tips for Working at a Computer All Day with Pure Journi earlier this week!

I’ve been actively applying to more influencer campaigns, so here’s hoping we’ll have more progress on this goal soon.

Are you a brand who’d like to work with For the Sake of Good Taste?  Check out our media kit here, then shoot us an email.

Double our social media following

Our goal stats are as follows:

Facebook: 100 likes

Twitter:  500 followers

Instagram:  150 followers

Pinterest:  150 followers

BlogLovin’: 50 followers

Tumblr:  25 followers

Flipboard:  25 followers

Google+:  25 followers

Currently, these are our stats:

Facebook:  51 likes (51%)

Twitter:   382 followers (76%)

Instagram:   137 followers (91%)

Pinterest:   116 followers (77%)

BlogLovin’:  33 followers (66%)

Tumblr:   0 followers (0%)

Flipboard:  0 followers (0%)

Google+:   0 followers (0%)

I’m focusing on growing the first few, which I consider our “main” platforms, so I won’t be too hard on myself if the last couple don’t grow as much as I hope. Plus, with the announcement of the end of BoardBooster, I expect Pinterest’s growth to slow a bit while I work out an alternative, unfortunately.

Still, there’s progress, slowly but surely.  If you’re willing, we’d love to have you as a follower on some of these platforms!

Have any suggestions for improving our progress between 2018 Goals Check-in #1 and #2? Let us know in the comments!