Worlds Unlike Our Own

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books and Dani @ Literary Lion. Today’s topic is When A Post Doesn’t Do Too Well

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Imagine you’ve spent several hours, even days, perfecting a post that you’re so excited to publish. Finally, you hit publish and eagerly await the response. But the response is not as much as you’d expected, or worse, it’s nonexistent. Has that happened to you before? How do you handle poor post results?

This has actually happened to me more than once and it’s quite disappointing when a post, book reviews in particular, that I’ve spent a lot of time on, or maybe a long anticipated read, doesn’t do too well. I used to get quite upset about it in the beginning, but over time, I’ve learnt that there are a variety of factors behind how well a post does. I now keep a list of posts that didn’t do as well as I would have liked, and when there’s a break in my blogging schedule, I use the time to promote some of them and it helps drive traffic to these posts.

Do you think there’s usually a cause for poor post results?

Yes, absolutely. Leaving aside things like writing structure and grammar, if it’s just random posts that don’t do well, there are so many other factors that could affect a post’s statistics. The time of day it was posted is often the biggest one for me, and if I deviate from my standard 12am, 12pm or 9pm posting time, the effect is immediately visible as the number of views drops significantly. Forgetting to promote a post on social media is another reason I’ve found for poor results since over the past year, Twitter has been a major factor in increasing engagement on my blog posts.

The time of year, I’ve found, also matters. Posts published on, just before or after any major holiday rarely tends to do well, and thinking about it logically, that makes sense, since people are probably busy celebrating rather than reading blog posts. This is especially true for Christmas. The engagement on my blog is usually fantastic all through the month with Blogmas posts, but from Christmas Eve to a couple of days into the new year, it’s practically non existent, which is why I choose to take my yearly hiatus during that week.

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What do you do when a blog post isn’t doing too well? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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