A Framework for Measuring Blog Success

Slide 1: Key Success Metrics Participation (outside in) + Conversation (inside out) Press Traffic Time Spent Social Media Comments Comments Conversation Participation Search Subscriptions Optimization Tags & Distribution Bookmarks

Slide 2: Measurement Toolkit: Participation • A statistical analysis package that measures baseline participation metrics for traffic and time spent. Shown: Google Analytics (free); Alternate: SiteMeter (free), WebTrends (paid)

Slide 3: Measurement Toolkit: Participation • Feedburner provides detailed subscription data for both RSS and email subscribers. • Distributable assets (widgets, social applications, embeddable content, etc) require the use of your technology providers’ proprietary measurement tools.

Slide 4: Measurement Toolkit: Comments • Tracked in your blogging software’s admin interface. • Requires human analysis to measure volume, trends and sentiment – all necessary qualitative measures that prompt your response activities. • Response levels and sentiment are a key input for changes to your content strategy. Shown: Typepad admin, features/functionality will vary by platform.

Slide 5: Measurement Toolkit: Conversation • Google search results indicate how well your blog content indexes in the organic results. – Track increases in hit volume and assess your prominence in the first 2-3 pages of results.

Slide 6: Measurement Toolkit: Conversation • Register your blog with Technorati and your blog’s authority and influence, as well as the volume, frequency, recency and sentiment of blog coverage.

Slide 7: Measurement Toolkit: Conversation • Monitor social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us to gauge how often consumers tag blog content, which content is most popular and what folksonomy tags are most widely used to save your content.