What is blog success to you?

In everyday life you can measure success by getting a promotion, a pay rise or buying a house. Most of us have life goals and when we achieve each one we can count that as a success. But when it comes to blogging, success is measured in a more subjective way. For some it could be getting a book deal, reaching 10,000 readers a day or sitting FROW at every fashion week. For other’s it could be getting invited to blogging events, working with brands and PRs or earning enough to pay the bills each month. I think the key thing to remember is that each blog has its own views about what success looks like and as bloggers we each have our own goals that we want to achieve. So however you choose to measure your success, I thought I’d share with you all some of the ways that I try and measure my own achievements.

Analytics

I think most of us would agree that having a ‘high’ readership figure would equate to success. And one of the ways that I cho0se to measure my readership figures is through Google Analytics. Although platforms like Blogger and WordPress offer their own stats, I find that the Google ones are far more accurate. You can use them to find out what content works well and where you’re getting most of your traffic from. Insights like these can be hugely beneficial in working out what your audience want. Plus if you’re looking to set yourself goals of increasing your traffic, then you can measure your success on a weekly or monthly basis.

Followers and Engagement

Again, I think most bloggers would agree that having a ‘high’ number of followers would mean you’re ‘successful’.  But although there are some obvious visual ways of measuring success, for example through Bloglovin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, there are plenty of other non visable ways to follow a blog. So although having a ‘high’ number of followers would be lovely, and definitely something that you could set as a goal, when it comes to measuring success I think you have to remember that engagement counts for far more than follower numbers. There’s no point having thousands of followers if no-one is engaging with your content. And by engaging I mean comments and likes on your posts, retweets and shares on your  Twitter and Facebook pages, likes on your Instagram page and subscribers to your YouTube channel. From working with brands and PRs, I know they value engagement over followers. Plus as a creator, it’s an amazing feeling seeing people engage with your content.

 Content

Now this can be hard to measure success wise, but it’s a great way to measure if you’re hitting your goals. Did you blog five times this week like you wanted to? Did you promote each post on social media? Have you improved your photography skills? All of these are ways that you can measure how you’re developing as a blogger and that’s important. As I think we can all appreciate that success does not happen overnight.

Invites and Income

Getting emails from PRs inviting you to launch events and fashion previews, or offering sponsored content and gifts for review means that brands are starting to notice your blog and want to work with you . And that is an amazing feeling. For some this is how they will measure the success of their blog. For others success comes with being able to do this full time because you can earn enough to pay the bills.

Happiness

Most of us started our blogs as a hobby because it made us happy. I know I certainly did. And when setting yourself goals and trying to measure your blog’s success you need to remember your own happiness. Do you still love to blog? Do you get excited to produce new content? Does blogging make you happy? These are the important things to consider when measuring success. As yes we’d all like our blogs to grow, for brands to want to work with us, for people to enjoy and engage with what we produce but the real success is us being able to do something that we love.

So these have been some of the ways that I choose to measure my goals, but what does blog success mean to you?