Measuring the success of your blog is always one of the most critical steps to success. Without attention to the metrics, your blog becomes a hit-or-miss proposition.
Don’t waste your time on efforts that aren’t producing results! To get the most from your business blogging campaign, keep an eye on these important factors:
Visitors
How many people are actually reading your blog? It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it gives you a big clue to your blog’s success. Measure how many overall visits as well as visits to individual blog posts to determine what topics are popular, what time of day you should be posting, and whether or not your blog is steadily contributing to the number of visitors to your site in general.
Leads and conversions
Visitors are great, but the ones who really matter are the ones who are really interested in your company. How many of your blog visitors click on the links to fill out forms? How many eventually make a purchase? Often, a blog post that doesn’t get a lot of visits will generate a lot of leads per visit, and this is the ratio to look at.
Analyze which posts convert the most visits into leads and sales, and concentrate your efforts on those topics. They tell you which kinds of content spark that most interest.
Links
Inbound links are an indicator of your blog’s popularity. How many sites are linking to your blog? A good amount of links from quality sites tells the search engines that your blog is worthwhile to other sites, and that these sites are spreading the word to other sites. This boosts your blog’s page rank, which in turn boosts the rating of your entire site.
Look at which topics generate the most links to keep your schedule of topics balanced and on track.
Social Media
Your social media accounts offer a wealth of information and measurable data about the performance of your blog. Which posts are the most shareable? Where is your traffic coming from? If people aren’t reading and sharing your blog content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest, reevaluate your topics and experiment with different tactics like changing the timing of your posts and/or posting as events occur, in real time, to catch your readers’ attention and encourage sharing.
Subscribers
Remember, people who like the first post they read will want to read more. So, offer a subscription to your blog via RSS or email. Have people opt-in to an email newsletter that contains links to your blog and/or offer a way for them to subscribe to have the blog come to them automatically as it is posted.
Subscribers are often the best source for word-of-mouth recommendationsand inbound links. They tell others about your blog and help you spread the word.
Measuring the success of your blog means more than just looking at numbers. It involves using data to put together a larger picture of what works for your company. Use these metrics to create a truly successful blog and your marketing resources will always be put to good use.
