Yes, I still miss Blogger.

But it’s less now that I’ve moved all of my content from Blogger to this site (this is a WordPress.com site for now).

Now that all my content is here, I’m going through them and keeping what’s still relevant because, let’s face it, do you really want to know about a prize pack I gave away three years ago? I didn’t think so.

One of the lessons I’ve learned that has floored me is the comparison of stats between the Blogger site and this one. Since I stopped blogging at that site, page views have gone down, which isn’t that shocking but this is.

In the month I have been blogging here consistently, the amount of page views are nearly the same as my other blog. I dove into the stats and saw some big differences. Here’s what I’ve observed.

Referrers

My big referrer to the Blogger site was still Google. All kinds of Google from everywhere — Mexico, Canada, England, etc.  In the five years I had been with the platform, I built up enough Google juice to keep some half decent traffic going even while I wasn’t blogging there all the time.  Even when you Google my name, Writingtoinsanity.com is still the first thing you see. This blog is on the first page but ranked lower. (Suggestions on how to increase ranking is much appreciated, by the way.)

For IcessFernandez.com, the top referrers have all been social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, Stumble, and Pinterest have been contributing to the traffic here. There’s been very little Google juice. That has been interesting. I think this talks to the power of social media. There is something to be said when trying to build a community around your blog and reaching out that way. You gotta go where the people are. Interesting isn’t it? One blog is where people came to, the other goes to the people. Different strategies but similar results.

Posts

I have not written a new post on WritingToInsanity.com since June. Yet, people are still accessing the content. Some of my big posts are ones I wrote earlier this year. In particular, the post about what every creative person should do right now. Here’s the post as it was transferred to this blog.  Not sure why this has been the big post in the past month since the stats don’t break down referrers to individual posts. Perhaps another blogger picked it up since there is traffic from other blogs since coming to the site.

The big post here? It’s this interview I did with Kelsye Nelson. This one gained a lot of traffic from social media and was retweeted and shared lots of times. This is where I think social media has helped with traffic on this blog. The second most popular post was the one about Graham Greene and the short story, which broke down some writing lessons from the author. Both contained really good information about writing. I also consider these two post my best on this site.

Blog followers

Without a doubt I have more blog followers here than I did at WritingtoInsanity.com and I worked on it for 5 years. I think it’s probably because WordPress bloggers can easily follow their favorite blogs and get them in their email. Following on Blogger can include an email from your favorite blogger but even with it’s integration into Google + there wasn’t very much sharing.

Conclusion

Not quite sure what the conclusion is to all this information I’ve gathered. On one had, I haven’t written a thing since June on one blog and I have decent traffic on it, while on the other hand I’ve written more on this one and gotten about the same amount of traffic.

However, the sources are different. The referrers are different for each so I’m wondering if it’s new audience vs existing audience that I’m looking at. Well, existing plus Google love.

The most consistent thing about these findings is that useful posts get traffic. Period. People want posts that will help them be better at what they do. The posts that have gotten high traffic on both my blogs have been those that have a lesson in them or a bit of information that will make them better writers. They are also the ones that take in mind my writing process or the process of the writers I’ve interviewed. This is amazing news because I really do try to put together posts that will help people be better writers.

One thing is for certain, this has been an interesting transition from one platform to another. For the folks that make the change, did you see a similar pattern? What do you guys think of some of the patterns I’ve seen in the stats?