Number 5 in a series, Business Blog FAQs, culled from my business blog consulting practice.
Consider Blog ROI Calculations Early On
What’s the payoff on a business blog? That question crops up all the time, as well it should. Blogging without purpose makes no more business sense than launching any other initiative without a clear sense of direction and a method of tracking progress.
Companies launch business blogs for a variety of reasons. Your focus determines what type of metrics you’ll want to track and pay close attention to. A few caveats.
- Most organizations have more than one goal in mind, so it may well be necessary to track more than one thing.
- Don’t be dejected by small numbers when you start blogging. Like any marketing program, results take time. The important thing is to make progress.
- Blogging and social media in general are resistant to compartmentalization. Data you track will have significance for more than one blogging goal.
Branding and Thought Leadership
If you’re trying to get your name out there and make people aware of your existence, you’ll want to pay particular attention to mentions – how often your company name is referred to in other blog posts, online press releases, Twitter conversations, Facebook messages, etc.
Addictomatic tracks keywords (e;g;, your company name) across a wide range of traditional and social media sites. It’s a site I use and is handy for a global overview. Here’s a more detailed look at various reputation management tools.
Branding and thought leadership are difficult to quantify and don’t lend themselves to precise ROI calculations in the way transactional blogging goals do. However, I would submit that measurements do exist in blogging that provide valuable insight on your progress, which is not something that can be said about printed media mentions, logos painted on the sides of trucks, ballpoint pens, and many other branding activities.
Customer Relationship Building
If your blog aims for more customer touches and more interaction with potential customers, track your progress on -
- RSS subscriptions
- Email subscriptions
- Post comments
- Traffic coming to your main website from the blog home page and individual blog posts (permalinks)
Backtype Connect is a simple and extremely useful WordPress tool I recently discovered that melds Twitter comments with comments left on a blog.
In this area, avoid compartmentalization at all cost. Connect blog activities to other sales and marketing activities and track trends -
- Identify new customers who found you through your blog
- Ask current customers if they read your blog, and why
- Link to blog posts in electronic newsletters and track page views
- Link to blog posts in email signatures and track page views
Remember – no blog is an island!
Search Engine Optimization
SEO continues to be the most popular reason for launching blogs, and with good reason – blogs can supercharge search engine visibility and allow smaller firms to compete with very large ones. Your search goals, keyword competitiveness, and your overall web content strategy will determine the data you need to track. SEO and content optimization are very big topics, but here are a few general recommendations to help you start thinking in the right direction.
- Install a good analytics program on your site. Google Analytics and Omniture are solid options, but there are many to choose from
- Establish landing pages on your site and use keywords on your blog to drive traffic to them
- Track the traffic to those landing pages on a regular basis
- Track the sources of the traffic to those pages and your site as a whole
- Use this information to test new keywords, different page designs, different calls to action
Investing in SEO and tracking ROI makes much more sense for sites that have conversion zones. A conversion zone is an area of a web page that contains a call to action – a call to order, request information, download an e-book, etc. If your site is merely an online billboard, you will have a hard time identifying a return on your SEO investment. With that in mind, you should additionally track -
- Number of site inquiries and sources
- Number of downloads and sources
- Number of new and repeat orders
- Frequency of orders
- Most popular entry pages to site
- Most popular exit pages from site
- Bounce rate on key landing pages (i.e., pages with conversion zones)
Bottom line – Determine your blogging goal first, identify your key metrics second, track them faithfully, and don’t obsess over the thousands of other statistics you’re going to ignore.
_________________________
Contact me now for a Business Blog Blueprint
Hi Brad, its so easy to assume the only metrics that matter are sales statistics that ROI evaluations can often give short shrift programs where those metrics are difficult or impossible to measure economically. I like that you have included alternative metrics here like views and subscriptions that have a logical connection to sales, but are technically easy to track.
Fred, Some marketing and branding objectives are much harder to quantify than others. Not every blogger is primarily concerned with makes online sales, but I’d say improving SEO is virtually universal. SEO is fairly straightforward in terms of measuring traffic, but understanding how that traffic translates into sales, customer loyalty, referrals – not so easy to measure. But then again, the same problem occurs with many other types of branding and marketing activities.
Thanks for your article, Brad. You give great ideas for tracking a variety of online metrics. A basket of these metrics will give a company a well-rounded quantification of a blog’s value to its marketing efforts.
To me, though, discussing an ROI means getting specific on showing the money. The best case is a blog’s contribution to converting visitors to sales and the value of the resulting revenues. The flip side, I suppose, would be if the blog contributes to cost savings in some way, such as giving customers information that allows them to self-service more, thus lowering support costs.
Hi Kathy, No question that a blog contributing to sales conversions offers the most clear cut and concrete ROI potential. But I think in some cases, the first step of a blog is to establish an audience and a brand. Once those things are established, it may make sense to promote products and services more directly.
Hey Brad, this is very valuable for me. As an ex-scientist, I’m a bit of a numbers-nut, especially when it comes to commercial projects. Your recommendation of Backtype Connect is excellent. Thanks.
Like you, I leave a serious amount of comments on sites. I would love a more efficient way of tracking them e.g. to see whether the author acknowledged, to see whether any other comments on a post referenced my comment etc.
Brad, any thoughts – or will Backtype cover this?
As an online newbie, I’ve got to say that there is great scope for some ‘intelligent’ analytical tools rather than the many blunt instruments that abound. It’s probably my ignorance of what’s available.
Best, Robin
Robin, It’s very hard to keep up with the various search tools, because it seems like new ones are being introduced every day. Backtype Connect is a way of consolidating Tweets and comments on your own blog, but as far as monitoring comments on other blogs, I still rely on comment subscription. This doesn’t allow for easy statistical analysis, but it gives you a very good feel.
Thanks, Brad. I will keep my eyes open.
I did notice that disqus (sp?) have a facility where you can see all of the comments you have made across all sites with them. This is of very limited use, but signs that someone is indeed noticing the value of comment tracking.
Best, Robin
Robin, Disqus seems to be gaining in popularity, but it makes the comment format on a blog somewhat complex. I’ve shied away from it because I fear some readers will be intimidated and not leave a comment.
“[T]he first step of a blog is to establish an audience and a brand.”
I agree, Brad. One thing anyone building a business case for a blog needs to understand is it’s a long-term strategy. Thus, any determination of an ROI should reflect that. Increased visitation and buzz precedes ROI.