One Month Site Review

We are through the first month of TMITLT’s lifespan, so it is time for a quick one month site review!

Sentiment

Through a full month of writing in February, the excitement has decreased slightly. I was able to start expressing some pent-up thoughts and the urgency has decreased. Despite this, I am still optimistic for this project’s future. There are still occasional urgent thoughts that I want to document and a massive backlog still to publicize. This should keep me busy for a while yet. I have been obsessing over ensuring there is enough scheduled content, which has decreased my satisfaction. Once I get one month ahead, I believe this strain will decrease. I am concerned about periods of outage or lack of bandwidth causing me to lose momentum. If I cannot maintain regular posts, the risk of this project falling apart increases. Having the one month buffer should minimize this risk as I am one week away from being a month ahead of content creation.

Engagement

In a sense, engagement through the first month was higher than expected. In another sense, it was lower. Through engagement review, I have seen that current events generate a much higher viewership than the other (potentially more meaningful content). Despite the appeal to chase the eyes, I plan to continue writing the more valuable and interesting concepts in hopes of folks finding the site and reviewing the older valuable content that has been written.

Stats

I have both Jetpack and MonsterInsights running for TMITLT and they seem to show slightly different statistics. This variation is something I plan to investigate more down the road.

88 of the 106 page views came on the homepage alone. Not much of the content was reviewed according to MI.

Both show relatively dismal stats for month one as expected. It will take time for folks to find and desire the content.

Lessons Learned

100 views/mo is completely reasonable for anyone to achieve. I have done so in the first month with no marketing and only two current event posts that were pulling folks to the site.

Current event posts glean much higher interest than other content likely due to search relevancy. Not much of my content is SEO friendly, nor do I really want it to be. Catchy headlines are great for eyes, but turn the material into a commercial rather than value.

I get into periods of inspiration for certain topics. This leads to a string of content relating to the same concept and limits the immediate diversification of writing. Over time, I think this will lead to depth across these areas of focus, but immediately, it may hinder a reader’s desire to follow updates if they are not interested in the specific topic.

This is currently for recreation. It is incredibly important that I consider it as such. Minimal views through the first month paired with the time spent developing content and ideas can lead to project burnout when this is a secondary focus.

In my urgency to develop content, I am creating shorter and shorter material. So long as the material is valuable and readers can follow it, this is fine. I need to be cautious of balancing quality and quantity.

It is incredibly easy to create an unmaintainable list of categories and tags for content. More on that below.

Future Plans

I will be gone and unable to write for over half of the next month. This will put strain on the content development process and my broader project efforts. I need to keep the considerations above at top of mind to be successful.

Content Management Strategy

In next month I would like to work on developing a clean category and tagging strategy. My current process is likely to lead to an unmanageable running list of content subsections. As of the first month, here are the groupings that have been created:

Perception was my top tag while Humans, Psychology, and Sociology was my top category. I need to develop a plan to ensure that this remains a reasonable list.

Site Beautification

As viewership is low, this is less urgent. Over time, I should put time into redesigning the site to be user friendly and a joy to engage with. As I write this, I have the editor open in another tab and am fixing simple mistakes, so this will likely be something I can hold off on for a while yet.

Analytics Review

As mentioned above, I need to put time into understanding my metrics. Why do Jetpack and MI show different metrics? Do I need both? Which stats should I care about more? Understanding what my key metrics are will help me create a better roadmap for the future. Connecting to Wincher will be another great task to accomplish, but I don’t anticipate that happening in March.

Content Creation and Distribution

I need to put time into developing content across all my categories. Despite having passion periods for specific topics, a lack of breadth will make TMITLT less meaningful for the broader audience. Additionally, I should begin to formulate a plan on what marketing will look like for TMITLT. I anticipate this being social media. There needs to be a way to drive users to the site. Writing for the sake of writing is selfish. It is important that the value I am uncovering is being digested by the public for this project to be truly meaningful.