Practical Social Media Tips

How do I measure blog success?

December 29, 2009 at 1:37 am | Posted in social media | 4 Comments
Tags: blog, blog measurement, blog success, blogger, bloggers, blogging, blogs, feedback, Groundswell, horse, list, metric, metrics, optimisation, optimization, permission marketing, RSS, social media, stat, statistic, statistics, stats, subscribe

Blogging has yielded some spectacular corporate successes, which are detailed in the seminal book Groundswell.

I strongly recommend you read this book.

I currently use six ways to measure blogging success:

1.  Site statistics.

I check my stats several times every day to see which blogs are sending traffic to which websites. I can even see which blog posts are performing better than others.

2.  Blog ranking.

I register my blogs with a ranking site that shows how well they’re performing relative to other blogs in their topic. This info is updated hourly.

3.  Comments.

When people leave comments, that means they’re visiting and reading. The more comments the better (though I do have to weed out spammers and ravers).

4.  Subscriptions.

Even better than comments are subscribes. When a person says YES to an email or RSS (short for Really Simple Syndication) feed of your blog, you know they’re digging it.

Building a subscriber base is the holy grail of blogging, as you can use it for a host of permission marketing initiatives.

5.  Sales.

Several new clients have approached me saying something like, ‘I found you via your blog, read your stuff for a while and decided you were the sort of person I wanted to do business with.’

For me, this is the acid test of a blog’s success. After all, that’s one of the main reasons we’re writing the damn thing!

6. Vibe.

In a few short months, my horse breeding client has reported a very positive reaction from clients and industry people.

She’s also feeling freer, as she’s getting prospects to read the blog before asking her questions.

She used to have to spend hours repeating herself to each inquirer.

She’s loving the process of decanting her wisdom to a blog that people can read without bothering her.

It’s much easier for her to fill in the gaps once people have some idea of what she’s on about.

And those who don’t like the blog’s style or content can deselect themselves (as they’re not the sort of people she wants handling her beloved horses anyway).

I’m heading up there for another overnighter soon, collecting photos and stories to keep feeding the blog.