One of the biggest hurdles that many companies face in adopting a blogging strategy is that they aren't sure how to quantify the results of their efforts. But blogging has evolved, and it has become much easier to accurately measure blog performance and tie those measurements back to achieving specific goals.
Let's first examine several of the metrics available, then we'll tie each one to specific goals for your blogging efforts.
Traffic
Traffic is probably the metric that people are most familiar with. It refers to how many people are visiting your site. Many tools can track your traffic, including Google Analytics, SiteMeter, and StatCounter. All will give you an idea of how many people are visiting your site during various timeframes. You may want to experiment with more than one of these services, as the numbers they report can vary.
It's very important to keep a close eye on traffic patterns, because doing so can reveal a great deal about your blogging efforts.
For example, if you track your traffic over time, you can tell which day of the week is best for traffic, and which hours of the day most people visit your blog. Knowing that allows you to tailor your publication schedule so that you have new posts showing up when your readers are more likely to be visiting your site.
Also pay close attention to where your traffic is coming from: Google searches? Other blogs? If you add another element to your social-media marketing, such as creating a Twitter account, you can track Twitter referrals to your blog.
If you notice a sudden spike in traffic, it could be a sign that you've received a link from a well-trafficked site. On the other hand, a sudden dip in traffic could alert you to other problems, such as your blog's being down due to server error.
Why Measuring Your Traffic Is Important
One of the main reasons a business wants to start blogging is to build awareness. If your traffic is increasing, this is a good sign that the content you are creating is resonating with your readers. More traffic makes it more likely that other bloggers will link to your posts, your feed subscribers will increase, and your influence online will continue to grow.
So how can you increase your traffic? First, make sure that your blog address is available on your Web site, as well as social-media sites you frequent. For example, if you have a Twitter account or a page on Facebook, add your blog URL to them.
Also, look at your posting patterns. Do you have a pattern? Make sure that you are posting when your traffic is highest at your site. If you can post only twice a week to your blog, make sure that you post on the two days that usually receive the most traffic.
But, in general, increasing the number of posts per week is an excellent way to increase traffic.
Feed Subscribers
Feed subscribers are people who have read your blog and have decided to subscribe to your blog's feed. They are almost always people who have visited and read your blog for some length of time and decided that they enjoy your posts; and instead of manually visiting your blog periodically, they prefer to have your posts delivered to them via RSS.
Since feed subscribers are willing to receive your new content as it is posted, it's important to track them.
FeedBurner offers a great service that not only tracks your subscribers but also offers ways to promote your feed. It offers you "chicklets" that you can add to your blog that display the number of its daily feed readers; it also allows your readers to subscribe via different readers, such as Bloglines and Google Reader.
Here's a screenshot from FeedBurner of how the feed subscribers have tracked over the life of my blog, The Viral Garden:
Why Measuring Your Feed Subscribers Is Important
Feed subscribers have decided that they enjoy your new posts enough that they want to receive them as soon as they are published. So if your feed subscriber base is increasing, it's an excellent sign that you are producing content that's resonating with your audience.
Now keep in mind that an increase in feed subscribers can actually negatively affect your traffic. If your subscriber numbers continue to increase, your traffic levels could as a result increase at a much slower rate, since feed subscribers would no longer need to visit your blog to access its content.
So make a point to track your blog traffic and feed subscriber totals in tandem, as they complement each other in providing a more accurate picture of your audience.
A great way to increase your subscriber numbers is to more prominently promote the ability to subscribe to your feed. For my blog, I created an entire section on my sidebar, and placed it at the top so that it's immediately visible to visitors. I noticed a decent increase in subscriber numbers after featuring the buttons at the top of my blog.
Links
Links to your blog posts will most likely be created by others who blog or via a social site such as Twitter. Think of a link as a way for someone to endorse your ideas, though they may also be critical them; whatever the reason, those who link to you want to share your post and ideas with others.
There are several ways to track new links to your blog. Two of the most popular are Technorati and Google Blog Search. Tracking links will tell you which of your posts are popular with others, helping you determine which topics are more popular with your readers.
Why Tracking Your Links Is Important
Though it's important to know how many links your blog has (Technorati calls this figure "authority," or the number of blogs/sites that have linked to your blog in the last six months), it's equally important to know which posts others are linking to.
If certain topics seem to be more popular with your readers, you can tailor your content to their wants or likes. Also, the more links your blog gets, the easier it is to build awareness and increase your traffic and subscribers.
You can increase the number of links by writing about popular topics but also by making it a point to link to other bloggers as much as possible, if they are creating content valuable to your readers. Doing so increases the chance that they will return the favor and link to your blog. Comments
Comments are invaluable to a business blog. Think of comments as free feedback that you are able to collect from your current and potential customers. You want to do everything you can to encourage and collect as many comments as possible.
As with traffic, subscribers, and links, you can track your comments over time; the more comments you receive, the better. If your blogging goals include collecting feedback and facilitating discussions with your customers, then you need comments from your readers.
Also, comments are excellent for customer service. Readers will often use comments to bring to your attention problems they are having with your products or services. As a result, you have an opportunity to engage your customers and hopefully help them solve their problems.
Why Measuring Comments Is Important
Comments are quite possibly the most important blogging metric you can measure. A blog that has comments left for most, if not every, post is a blog with a vibrant and engaged community of readers.
Once you receive comments, you can incorporate the feedback from your customers into your business and marketing processes to not only improve your efforts but also provide better customer service. And if your readers see that you both appreciate their comments and act on them, they will likely continue to leave comments and tell others about your blog.
Therefore, it is vital to measure comments. One way is to calculate the average number of comments per post. If that number is decreasing or even staying level, you may want to dig deeper to find the cause.
To increase the number of comments, first make sure that you reply to as many comments as possible. Sometimes a reader will make a statement that might not require an answer, but if a reader asks a question you should make every effort to reply. Doing so shows your readers that you appreciate their input, and it encourages them to leave more comments.
Second, make sure that you encourage your readers to leave comments, and also make it clear that they are encouraged to disagree with any points you raise. Finally, thank your readers for their comments. Refer to readers by name as much as possible; little touches like that show your readers that you are thankful for their input.
Matching Each Metric to Your Blogging Goals
Now let's review the metrics that you should pay attention to, depending on your blogging goals. For each of the following goals, I'll list the metrics you should focus on measuring.
1. Blogging to build awareness for your business
Most businesses want to use their blog as a way to grow awareness of them online. If this is your primary goal, keep a close eye on how your traffic, subscribers, and link counts are tracking. Remember to track your traffic and subscriber totals in tandem. If your traffic and links are increasing, it's a good sign that you are creating content that your readers are finding valuable.
Also, as your blog gains more links, its Google PageRank will increase, which means that your blog and its posts will show up higher in search results for relevant terms. That, in turn, helps establish your authority, which helps build awareness for your business.
2. Blogging to facilitate feedback and discussion with your customers
If you want to use your blog primarily as a tool to better communicate with and understand your customers, you'll want to focus on tracking comments and links. If your readers comment regularly, the feedback you can collect will greatly improve your marketing and make it more efficient. Essentially, your blog will have paid for itself (and then some) as your marketing costs are lowered.
And as your blog receives more comments, other bloggers are more likely to link to your posts, because the comments themselves become a promotional tool for the blog. To a lesser extent, more comments also help you build awareness for your blog (and your business), and also helps expose your blog to new readers (and your business to potential customers).
3. Blogging to expose your business to new customers
If your main goal for your blog is to introduce your business to new customers, you will want to make sure to track how many links as well as comments your posts are receiving.
Remember that links are exposing your blog to a new audience, because the link is originating from another site or blog, which has a different readership than your blog does. So every time that a reader of another blog clicks on a link to your blog, there's a very good chance that this reader is viewing your blog for the first time. So you want to pay close attention to how many links your blog has.
Also pay attention to comments on your blog. As other bloggers comment, make a point to follow them to their blog and comment on their posts. Doing so will help expose your blog to the other bloggers' readers, but it also increases the chance that the other blogger will continue to link to your blog.
Developing a Plan for Your Blog
Remember that the best way to accurately judge whether your blog is getting the results you want is to first clearly detail what your goals are for your blog. After you know what you want to accomplish with your blogging, you can begin to track and monitor the metrics that will help you reach your goals.
Each metric plays a different role in determining the success of your blog, so once you understand how to measure your blogging efforts, you can then match your findings to your goals and decide whether your blog is giving you the results you want.
