Gauging Engagement: 2020 A-to-Z Takeaways

It is typical — inasmuch as two previous tries at the A-to-Z Challenge counts as ‘typical’ — for me to do a reflection post, post-A-to-Z Challenge, to sort of sort out how the whole thing worked for me. Which is pretty much what this meta-ish crunchy numbers Allaboutmyblog post is going to be. 😉

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‘Kayso…

Those of you who are still here:

Did you ever notice how when you change something, but you change more than one thing about that ‘something’, it’s kinda hard to gauge the impact of that change?

It’s something I probably should have considered before heading into my A-to-Z Challenge writing this year, but instead I was like, “Oh, a THEME! Go me!” and also like, “No way am I writing 26 posts.”

*laugh*

Ah, well.

So for the first two years I did the challenge, I had no theme. The first year (2018) I just blogged as normal but at a higher pace than usual. The second year (2019) I occasionally veered off, topic-wise, into random tidbits that have nothing to do with Love or Sex or Relationships, while also writing/posting ‘normal’ (read: ‘normal’ content for this blog) stuff. The difference, numbers-wise? I posted 26 times in April 2018 and 26 times in April 2019. April 2019 saw a 25% uptick in ‘Likes’ and a 46% increase in total comments over April 2018.

That, to me, is significant.

Why? Because ‘Likes’ and comments are about engagement. And I like it when readers are engaged. 🙂

But then I went and changed things further this year in two ways — I wrote with a theme (health/y/ness) in mind and I combined letters, which meant significantly less posts overall — and now I’m like, “…OH.” Because which of those things had an effect on engagement and how…?

???

I think I have to look at the whole month of April even though normally I only post my alphabetical entries and this year I had those plus three extras: {1} a community participant list, {2} an e[lust] digest (I don’t normally contribute to e[lust] in April but this year I did), and {3} a Wicked Wednesday anecdote. This brought my total post count to 18 (over the course of 30 days), which is essentially 31% less content than the previous two years.

Except it didn’t feel like less.

In frequency, yes. I mean: obviously. There is a significant difference between fitting 18 posts into a month instead of 26. [I are smart at teh maths.] 😉

But I wrote. Like, high-word-count, lots-to-say kind of writing. So in that way, the content was more. If that makes sense.

Anywhoo…

We’ll just call the post count a factor.

And the topic of the posts – being all, in some way, realted to health/y/ness – is a factor too. Not only because the posts were themed (which was change enough), but also because the theme was a bit off center from what my regular readers are used to.

Because of those things, and because I was interested in trying to gauge engagement regardless of those things, I came up with an alternate statistical solution.

Instead of looking at totals, I looked at per-post activity averages:

• 2018: 10 ‘Likes’ per post, 7 comments per post
• 2019: 13 ‘Likes’ per post, 10 comments per post
• 2020: 15 ‘Likes’ per post, 13 comments per post

Which…

That feels like progress, eh? 🙂

Because, engagement.

Other statistical tidbits that I find interesting:

• Advocacy was the most viewed A-to-Z post of the month and garnered the highest number of comments.
• Joke was the post with the most ‘Likes’. (It was also my shortest post!)
• My longest post was 2237 words (holy schlamoly, Batman!) and was about thriftyness.
• And, randomly… The most-reported (a la Google) search term that brought people to my blog in April 2020: kcperrin. To which I say:

NO. Idea.

I have zero clue where that search term came from or why it somehow led to here, but…

HOkay.

A n y w a y

I may have no idea about that, but I did come up with a GREAT idea during my alphabetical blogging adventure this year: Check it out!

And – if you’re not ‘checked out’ after all that stats-(qu)oh!s – drop me a note and share your thoughts below. 🙂