Measuring a blog’s success

These days, most businesses have a blog, and those that don’t – well, they are likely to be considering it. It’s a vital tool to help promote both a business and that business’s expertise in its industry. A blog allows for demonstration of thought leadership and the chance to actively engage with key stakeholders.

While all of this is true, a blog is pretty much useless if its performance is not being measured. Writing a blog a week may well be bringing in the viewers, but if you aren’t measuring, quite simply, you don’t know. So what are the best methods for measuring a blog’s success? Here are our tips:

Measure Visitors

It sounds obvious, but a blog is only as good as the amount of people reading it, so you need to be measuring. It is important to monitor the different posts to see where improvement is needed and which have been the most successful. If the most viewed blog posts all follow the same themes, this is a formula worth sticking to. Perhaps a video garnered the most attention, so incorporate that into posts going forward.

Measure Feedback

A blog doesn’t have to (and most likely won’t) result in a sale, but it can and should result in conversation. The whole idea of a blog is to provide a platform where your business can engage with existing or potential customers, industry bodies or the media. The more comments, feedback and questions a post receives, the more it shows the blog is spreading. Therefore, so is your business. Ask questions in your blog, open the conversation up for discussion. Just be sure to monitor the feedback and reply to any comments.

Measure Subscribers/Followers
Admittedly, it is hard to gain subscribers, but this is a great measure of success for a blog. The more followers, the more people who trust what you have to say and are, more than likely, spreading the word to others. Measuring how many people follow your blog provides a solid indicator of the quality of your blog and the impact it’s having.

While this is just a brief overview, it should help to understand the benefits of a blog and how those benefits can be exploited for maximum effect. The more information you have on how, when, why and what on your blog is being viewed, the better you can make it in the future and the more positive impact it will have on your business.