Overall, 2017 was a great statistical year for RSPC. For eight months out of the year, we averaged at least 20 Views per day. That’s awesome!

But there were some notable lows as well, especially compared to the stellar performance across most of the year.

2017’s Big Numbers

We’ll start with the overall numbers for 2017:

• Views: 7,527
• Visitors: 4,664
• Comments: 163
• Likes: 1,778
• Posts: 261
• Followers: 358

After I officially gave up on our lofty marketing goals last month, I projected that we would finish with about 7,500 Views and 4,600 Visitors. Check.

We also published 261 posts in 2017… That’s more than one-third of our grand total of 713! A big boon to that number was our consistency. Between my Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday posts, I only missed one day this year.

Jessie was… mostly consistent 😛 And it helped!

Our 1,778 Likes and 163 Comments in 2017 were way higher than 2016: 1,021 and 141, respectively.

Top Posts

Only three of our top 10 posts for Views (not including the homepage) were actually published in 2017.

My Hozier and Halestorm posts once again led the pack with a combined for 2,037 Views.

Strangely, the next five posts run the gamut of topic and original publication date:

1. Creativity Sessions: Questions to Ask Your Alpha Readers – 9/27/2016 – 119 Views
2. Gut Reaction: THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir – 11/8/2015 – 109 Views
3. The Warden of Everfeld – 7/24/2016 – 105 Views
4. Short Story Challenge – “First Day of Work” – Marcy Erb – 12/8/2014 – 89 Views
5. December’s Theme – I’m Late, I’m Late, For A Very Important Date…. – 12/4/2015 – 46 Views

Aside from my WoE page, I have no idea why those posts were more popular in 2017 than in their respective publication years.

Similarly, our top five posts published in 2017 represent a decent variety of the content we try to produce here on RSPC:

1. Blogger Recognition Award! – 3/14 – 46 Views
2. The Key to Social Media Marketing – 2/21 – 44 Views
3. 4 Key Elements of Our Press Release – 6/13 – 38 Views
4. Jason Concepcion on Why We Love Fantasy Stories – 9/5 – 37 Views
5. My Short Story is Live! – “Wolf’s Moon Night” – 2/5 – 36 Views

Evidently, I should have written more marketing posts this year. My marketing series fell off as my publication date was pushed back out of 2017.

The Blogger Recognition Award is one of those blogosphere devices designed to bring eyes to a bunch of different bloggers, so the high number there is to be expected.

Despite these high points, there were still some places I feel we could have done better this year.

Coming Up Short

One of my goals since our start in 2014 has been to earn enough Visitors to eclipse the previous year’s Views total. We did that each year until 2017.

That’s not a huge deal, because earning 5,505 Visitors (to match our 2016 Views) would have been a tall order in any circumstance, but especially because I did not use any PPC campaigns to bring more eyes to our website as I had intended.

However, my optimism took a hit in August, when our streak of seven straight months with 600+ Views ended. (In January and April we had 694 and 702 Views, respectively!)

Our Views in August dipped to 584, rebounded to 604 and a whopping 730 in September and October, and then dropped again to 498 in November — our lowest View total since August 2016! Fortunately, we managed to finish out December with a respectable 553 Views.

Frankly, it felt like our growth plateaued in the second half of the year. Thirteen of our 20 posts in August (the first really down month) had less than 10 Views. That lack of push across the month likely impacted the total.

So, aside from paying for clicks (and pushing my soon-to-be-published book like crazy), how are we going to grow and maintain our audience through 2018?

I’m honestly not sure. It’s not feasible for me to increase my current posting schedule of Sunday-Tuesday-Friday, unless I come up with a fourth idea that’s as easy and sustainable as Haiku Sunday. I have a monthly newsletter to maintain!

We also have a regular posting schedule of six days per week as it is; would adding that seventh day really make that big of a difference?

Maybe… 13 more Visitors per week than usual for about 17 more Views – that’s 676 Visitors and 884 Views extra, so it’s something we should consider.

I think this may take some more mulling on my part.

What are your thoughts? Does more content = more views, or is it better to focus on maximizing what we post?

Steve D