My Most Popular Post And Why I Think It Did So Well

Back when I first started this blog, I was posting about every subject you could think of. Over time, I decided to narrow down to blogging/design tips, but there was always something that bothered me about going with that path; my top posts were of a completely different topic. While I’ve learned that my audience does enjoy blogging tips and tutorials, it hit me recently that I’m missing what a huge part of my readers have in common: they’re college students. And they love college related posts.

I think the reason it took me so long to realize this is that readers my age interact much differently with the blogs they read than say, young adults or mothers who have blogs of their own. My readers who have their own blogs tend to comment, share my content, and interact directly. Readers my age (I’ll say the 18-23 range) don’t usually comment, share a lot on Pinterest, and simply read my content without making it obvious that they’re doing so. I wasn’t confident about this assumption until I started looking through my most popular pins on Pinterest, and holy cow, my college related pins have spread like wildfire! One post in particular has done extraordinarily well (for me at least), and it happens to be one of the simplest posts I’ve made: a college shopping list.

There are several other pins out there with similar pin counts, and considering I just found this specific pin yesterday, I have no idea how many others there are! This post has been popular since the week I posted it back in 2014, and I get at least 100 notifications a day of new pins on it.

So, why of all posts did this one receive such constant attention? As a college student myself, I’m constantly searching Pinterest for helpful tips and new information, and I think a lot of college-age girls out there do the same. Pinterest makes it so easy to scan graphics for what you’re looking for, and this post was obviously something people wanted to read.

I decided to test out a few different graphics to see if I just happened to have popular pinners share my post, and after 3 changes, the pins kept coming, so I knew that wasn’t a fluke. My most recent graphic is actually a shorter version of the shopping list, with a prompt for the pinner to click to my blog for more. I think this tactic is great if you don’t want your pins to end up on a board and never lead the pinner to your blog!

It also seems that there aren’t as many consistent college bloggers out there, meaning there aren’t many bloggers who continuously pop up on Pinterest and gain a name amongst pinners. This seems to lead to a better opportunity at showing up in search results, where two of my pins are at the top of a common search phrase (along with my girl Gina!):

I thought this post might just be a one-hit wonder, but my second most popular post is about saving money in college, and that was enough for me to confidently say that blogging about college is something I should tap into more. The college blogging world is one I haven’t looked into much, but from what I’m learning, it seems like a lot of college students are wanting to start blogs and read more of them, giving me a great opportunity to jump into that category.

What does that mean for The Blogging Brew? I still have a huge passion for the techy side of things, so I will definitely continue blogging about that! But you can expect to see more posts targeted at college students, including tips and personal experiences. Blogging only about blogging has sort of taken away the personal aspect from this blog, so I’m excited to bring that back with more posts like my recent one on a fun purchase I made!

For any student readers, feel free to contact me with any questions or ideas you have for future posts! I have a list going already, and I can’t wait to get that content out for y’all to read!