I promised almost a year ago that I’d update you all every few months on our 2018 goals for For the Sake of Good Taste. While our technical issues (and, quite frankly, life) got in the way of updates as regularly as I would have liked, I couldn’t go without sharing our 2018 Goals final check-in.
Overall, we didn’t do terribly! As you might remember from our original 2018 goals post, I purposefully set these to be a bit ambitious. Thanks to my finishing undergrad, a slew of technical difficulties, and some other issues along the way, we didn’t succeed as much as I would have liked. I can only imagine how far we’d have gone if we had had smooth sailing!
Still, I’m enormously proud of how far For the Sake of Good Taste has come in 2018. It’s been outrageously hard at times and there have been moments that I’ve genuinely considered giving up this whole blogging thing for good. But, in the end, I’m so, so glad I haven’t.
QUADRUPLE OUR TRAFFIC
We didn’t quadruple our traffic, by any means. Our numbers:
SESSIONS:
Goal: 6,500
Final: 4,118
USERS:
Goal: 5,250
Final: 3,377
PAGE VIEWS:
Goal: 26,000
Final: 9,530
Still, we’ve done so well, all things considered! Here’s a comparison of our 2017 end-of-year stats with 2018’s:
Sessions:
2017: 1,574
2018: 4,118
Users:
2017: 1,255
2018: 3,377
Page views:
2017: 6,442
2018: 9.530
INCREASE OUR RETENTION
Our retention ended the year at 4.1% returning visitors to 95.9% new, as compared to 94.4%/5.6% for 2017. Not the improvement we’d hoped for, but I’ll take it!
FEATURE TWO GUEST POSTS
This one was a rousing success! Not only have we shared two guest posts this year, but’s we’ve went all out and shared three, with more on the way for 2019!
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
While we didn’t technically get a post out each week, we did have well over 52 posts go live in 2018! That being said, I’m going to go ahead and call this one a win.
LAUNCH OUR VEGANISM COURSE
I actually rescheduled our content plan quite a bit over this year and the official launch has moved to 2019 (with my upcoming ebook, Swap It!, coming first!). Still, I’ve made progress on the course itself, did some minor rebranding to align the blog more with this kind of content, and even planned more complimentary offers to come. Not a technical win, but I’ll take it.
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
Thanks to our GDPR compliance update, we’ve actually lost quite a few followers since 2017, and we haven’t regained anywhere near as many. As you may have noticed, we’ve had some new opt-in freebies come to the Resource Library over the past several weeks and this is definitely going to be a major focus for 2019.
Be sure to sign up to help us out (and snag lots of freebies, with more to come!)!
WORK WITH TWO BRANDS
We’ve been lucky enough to share sponsored posts with Pure Journi and Opportuniteas this year, plus I’ve worked on social media campaigns with brands such as Downy!
I’ve also shared quite a few posts working with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours which, while not technically sponsored posts, do include some fantastic ARCs, so I’d say these count too!
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
As the year progressed, I really narrowed in to focus on our “primary” social media outlets, so I officially sliced this goal almost in half. As for our final standings for 2018 . . .
Goal: 100
Actual: 66
Goal: 500
Actual: 686
Instagram:
Goal: 150
Actual: 272
Pinterest:
Goal: 150 followers
Actual: 251
BlogLovin’:
Goal: 50 followers
Actual: 39
So, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest succeded beautifully and BlogLovin’ got painfully close!
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!
We may not have hit all of our 2018 blogging goals, but I’m so proud of the progress we’ve made–and so, so grateful to all of you for helping us get there! Here’s to an even better 2019!
