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| Snapshot of some of the stats Google Blogger provides for a particular period of time (these are for this week) |
I took a look at my viewer stats this morning to see if I could get some inspiration on what to write about today. I have a few posts started, but nothing near completion (or even near where they should be for editing down). So instead I took a trip down memory lane on my postings in the last fiften months. It was an interesting trip and revealed to me what people read the most.
If you're a blogger, or an aspiring blogger, perhaps this might prove useful. If you're a reader, then maybe you'll discover some posts you haven't seen before!
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| MAC's old scary face chart |
Hands down, the number one most viewed post remains my post on face charts. Written less than a year ago (at this point in time), by far and away it takes the lion's share of views.
I'm not sure how I can capitalise on this, I could scan in all the face charts I've produced to-date, but I'm pretty sure that it's blank charts that are of interest to most.
2. Brushes
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| Which brush to use for what, where, how and why |
Especially (and in order of interest):
- Foundation Brushes (by far the highest number of pageviews)
- Brushes I recommend for eyeliner, together with a how-to post on creating The Flick, come in at a close second
- Everyone wants to know about Lauren Luke brushes it would seem
- Followed closely by searches for Chanel brush information
- Brushes for contouring are of particular interest
- Real Techniques brushes also get a look in here
- A post on where I purchase makeup brushes (inexpensive as well as, well, less-so!) continues to have quite a high number of views, but nowhere near as high as I might have imagined
- A series of posts on eye brushes starts here but the most viewed was the one on blender brushes
After that, people always want to know about the "latest" (LE) brush from MAC, for example, or what brushes I recommend for brides, or what is the best brush cleaner on the market.
Interestingly, very few people want to know about concealer brushes, or lip brushes - two essentials in my opinion (when I got into makeup years ago, concealing, correcting, contouring and colours (foundation undertones) were the things I wanted to master!)
3. The Basics
I run a makeup bootcamp class which spends two entire classes focusing on the basics; foundations, concealers, correctors, product placement, application methods, brushes, contours/blushers/highlighters/bronzers, powder/cream/liquid/gel products (after that we get on to the fun stuff of creating looks). As I'd have expected therefore, the posts I've written about "makeup basics" get huge views - in order of interest:
- Giorgio Armani Maestro Fusion foundation (this post, in a short time, has had massive hits)
- Yves Saint Laurent Le Teint Touche Éclat foundation
- Selecting foundation for your skin tone
- Selecting concealers and under eye concealers
- Bobbi Brown BBU palette (concealers and correctors)
and a bunch of cheaper drugstore "recommended products" posts also feature heavily in the ratings.
4. Everything else...
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| 42: The meaning of Life, The Universe & Everything (else) ... gettit?! |
After brushes and basics, there's always a surge in pageviews around LE collections (especially Christmas collections from MAC and pretty much any Chanel collection). Surprisingly, there's substantially more interest in the press release content (before the collections are released) than in any product reviews that I do.
Product dupes get a reasonable amount of interest - in particular if the original product is expensive or LE.
A surprising one for me - anything to do with trend colours (eg I wrote two posts on Burgundy (my latest colour obsession); one on accessories etc and the other on makeup - both have had massive interest).
And finally, what I thought would be a gap-filling quick "throwaway" post on makeup tips has had a lot of pageviews, and generates a reasonable amount of follow-up emails.
5. What do people not bother with all that much?
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| OK, 0% interest is overstating, but I was surprised at the relative lack of interest in particular posts... |
There's not as much interest in skincare products, like moisturisers, serums etc. I do like writing about them however, so I do plan on continuing to do so, even if the ROI isn't great. Similarly, stangely, not a huge amount of interest in mascaras, hair products or nails.
This was an interesting exercise which revealed some surprises to me. Posting every day as I try to, it's a good idea to stop and take the temperature every so often; this gig is not all about stats, but it's certainly a good idea to keep an eye on them occasionally. Hands down, the majority of my traffic comes from internet searches, I'm not doing this long enough to have built up huge followers, so my stats for now are largely a reflection of my position in the search hierarchy ;-)
Of course, any stats that I view are biased; those posts which are written a longer time ago have had time to accumulate larger pageview numbers from searches etc. And similarly, if there's a lot of posts in the "blogosphere" already which contain information pertaining to a particular range/product, then my posts may not make it to the elusive first Search Results page. There's ways around this, involving the Black Arts of SEO (search engine optimisation), something I keep meaning to find time to look into.
It's interesting to see what people are interested in reading about. In an ideal world, then, I'd just (a) produce content (on upcoming collections), (b) there's only so much you can write about product fundamentals, so there's not a huge amount more I can post there (c) stop bothering with skincare reviews.
I would find that monumentatlly boring however, and the point of this blog for me is to write about what I want. So for now I shall continue along the lines of my "mixed bag" approach, and try to schedule in some time to review SEO tactics :-) I must also do a similar exercise with Facebook and Twitter to see if I can ascertain how much traffic is driven my way from those feeds...