Match Your Blog’s Metrics to Its Goals

Author:

Mack Collier

Source:

One of the biggest issues companies continue to have about blogging (and social media in general) is:  “How do we tell if it’s working?’
 
One way to greatly improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your company’s blogging efforts is by tracking the right metrics.  When you are creating the strategy for your company blog, one of the things you need to focus on is making sure that the metrics you track match the goal you have for the blog.  For example, if your company wants to use its blog as a tool to build awareness among current and potential customers, then one of the metrics you might track would be number of email subscribers.  You might also want to look at number of comments per post and also the number of email inquiries or Contact Form submissions.
 
But you need to make sure that you are tracking metrics that feed back into the goal you have for your blog.  Once you have settled in on the right metrics, then you can customize your blog and your blogging efforts so that these metrics are optimized.
 
For example, one of the metrics I measure at MackCollier.com is number of email subscribers.  Up until May 15, 2010, I was averaging a new email subscriber every three days.  In the 65 days since then, I have added an additional 87 email subs.  What changed to cause this spike?  I moved the email subscription form to the TOP of the blog, “above the fold.”  That simple change has netted me an 311% increase in email subscribers.  Not too shabby.
 
So when you look at your own blog, ask yourself two questions...