You know what’s insane? It’s July 1st. You know what that means? We’re halfway done with 2016, Christmas is 6 months away, & it’s time for our monthly recap. I’ve seen these posts done in some really clever ways, but the ones I love most are the ones that give you a recap of posts up on the blog in June, life updates, stats, and a little fun bonus! So here go’s my attempt at updating y’all on the craziness that are our lives and the fun that we’ve been having during our favorite summer month!
June Blog Posts!
June was a month jam packed with blog posts that we loved writing and the beginning of a new chapter of The Swirl Blog. We got a new design, went self hosted, and introduced a new movement: #SwirlSocial! That’s one crazy month. In case you were as busy as we were! Here’s what you missed:
5 Amazing Water Bottles To Try Right Now.
A College Girl’s Guide: Easy Pinterest Recipes!
5 Tips for Effortless Airport Travel
As someone who flies home for every break, I’m here to share with you my tips to make your airport travel experience the best it can be! Yeah, we all have to wait in those massive lines and deal with screaming babies. However, some simple preparation can make your time in the airport feel like no time at all.
A College Girl’s Guide: Landing A Summer Internship
The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Taste Test
Weekend In My Life: Houston, Pizza, HEB, & More.
Best of Pinterest: Studying in College
The Swirl 2.0: Rebranding, Blogiversarys, & Giveaway!
Hey there! It’s been a year of blogging and I can’t believe all that we’ve gone through to get here! Today, I’m gonna reflect on my year of blogging, show you some really cute pictures we took, and host a giveaway from a great brand! We love love love that so many people have had a positive experience on our site and we want to continue to bring quality content that you all love to read! Looking forward to the next big thing and can’t wait for you to follow along!
The Guide to A Killer DIY Photoshoot!
**Guest Post: How To Be Productive This Summer
Life Updates!
Gabby: It’s been a super hectic month here in Houston! My internship is taking full speed ahead while blogging stuff is also taking up a lot of my time! I spend a lot of my free time trying new restaurants and shopping with friends from the program and I also spent some time with my fellow blogger, Shaguna! She took me to this amazing crepe place that I blew up Instagram with {hehe @theswirlblog}! I’ve been loving my life down here and I can’t wait to live in a big city like this one once I can adult properly on my own! I’m writing a couple of posts about big city living and safety in college so you can look for that sometime in the coming weeks!
I also hosted the BloggingCollege chat on June 26, 2016 and it was so much fun! It got my brain wheels turning for ways to incorporate a twitter chat for #SwirlSocial which is definitely in it’s pre pre pre pre plan stages, but definitely something Hannah and I want to do in the future! We’ve also got some awesome collabs coming up on the blog soon: giveaways, social media campaigns, and guest posts; so keep an eye out for all of that fun stuff! Love y’all!
Hannah (but technically Gabby)**: Y’all Hannah is over in London right now and doesn’t have super great access to the blog, so you’ll see a lot of guest posts in her Wednesday spot, but don’t worry she’s coming back! Look at this super hip photo of her chilling in London. I’d like to think she’s being a globe traveler for the both of us {still waiting for my opportunity to pretend to be a Cheetah Girl in Barcelona}.
Watch out for Instagram and Snapchat for sneak peaks into both our lives and to get more of a Day in the Life snapshot of what’s going on aka when I get mail and freakout and OOTDs.
Blog Stats!
Since we’ve recently moved over to Google Analytics, we have a little bit more accurate stats and we can look more closely at demographics and really improve the site which is great! I’m gonna keep the stats pretty short{more in depth in July since it’ll be totally Google Analytics and not a combo of GA and WordPress), but here are our blog and social media stats for the month of June.
May Stats:
Page Views: 18,955
Unique Visitors: 14,575
Top Post: 100 Things to Know Before College
June Stats:
Page Views: 36,865 +48.5%
Unique Visitors: 18, 196 +19.9%
Top Post: 15 Ways to Get And Keep Your Life Together
This month was great for The Swirl Blog! We saw incredible growth from all our social media and organic searches which mean SEO is really growing. Honestly, we thought this month was going to be abysmal because of the switch from wordpress.com to Self-hosted, but we did great. Also, really loving that our old posts are continuing to bring high volumes of traffic!
Social Media:
Twitter: 661 +94
Instagram: 536 +90
Facebook: 165 +15
Pinterest: 2,821 +832
Pinterest continues to amaze me because I don’t really understand how it grows so fast! We pin a lot of stuff, but not like a crazy ton amount! It continues to be our strongest traffic source for all of our posts not just viral posts! Twitter and Instagram have become my little obsessions so that’s seen some growth as well! We’ve basically shifted our social media strategy and it’s working!
#SwirlSocial June Favorites!
So, we’ve recently debuted our online social fam called #swirlsocial. We’re trying to make it so bloggers, readers, youtubers, vloggers, and whoever else can really connect across social media to discuss real life struggles like time management, school and testing anxiety, body positivity, and careers {cue twitter chat and hashtag}! So, we’ve taken cues from Rachel over at Seashells and Sparkles and Helene over at Helene in Between: we’ve created our own instagram hashtag as well #swirlsocial. You can use it on pictures of Vanilla Iced Lattes, murals, hand lettering, landscapes, and anything else your little heart desires and at the end of the month, we’ll pick our faves and put them on the blog! So here are some faves from the last few days of June!
A photo posted by Living In Full Bloom (@livinginfullbloom) on
A photo posted by Ashley (@a_little_ashley) on
So, there are my favorite #swirlsocial Instagram pics! Let us know if you liked this post and whether or not it was too long! We love feedback from y’all! Happy July and enjoy your 3 day weekend of family, friends, and freetime!
With love,
