Define and Measure: 2 Keys to Business-Blogging Success
Every business blog needs to start with two fundamental questions: Why are you blogging, and how do you know it's working?
Contact
PrintThe first thing to do when starting a business blog or evaluating the one you have is to answer two questions:
- Why am I blogging?
- How do I know if it's working?
If you can answer the first question, you're ahead of the competition. If you can answer both, you're on your way to becoming a master blogger. Every successful blog has an objective and a yardstick.
Useful Blogging Objectives for Small Business
Here are three solid objectives for small firms, which can easily be pursued in combination.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Blogs helps small companies compete for rankings against much larger competitors.
2. Thought leadership. Because small businesses don't have big ad budgets, they may lack brand awareness and credibility. A blog enables the small firm to showcase its expertise without the big budget.
3. Lead generation. If a blog becomes widely read, posts can become a source of direct leads (from prospects) and referrals (from fans of your brand). Don't underestimate the power of referrals: Firms whose customers aren't reading blogs can still get high quality referrals.
Simple Metrics for Your Blogging Objectives
Entrepreneurs typically don't have the resources to collect and analyze mountains of data. What you need are simple and relevant yardsticks like these to evaluate performance.
SEO yardsticks. Because search has become so highly personalized, rankings are no longer a reliable metric. Instead, focus on non-branded referred traffic. Look for a steady increase in visitors who have used Google and other search engines to find you when conducting searches for relevant terms.
Thought leadership yardsticks. What you're after is a handle on who is talking about you and what they're saying. Two good tools for a quick survey of your buzz landscape are Addict-o-matic and Social Mention. An even simpler way to gauge thought leadership is to conduct Google searches on your brand (your name, product or company name) and explore the results. You may be surprised to see where your name crops up.
Lead generation yardsticks. As a freelancer, I could judge the lead generating power of my blog by inquiries coming in via phone, email, or contact forms. Referrers would give me a heads-up that they had referred a prospect; prospects would mention they heard about me from a particular source. Frequently, what precipitated the lead was somebody being impressed by a blog post.
Brad Shorr has been blogging since 2005. His freelance business, Word Sell, Inc., was one of the first to introduce blogging and social media to the business community. He is currently Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago Internet marketing firm. The agency specializes in B2B, with clients in industries as diverse as truck tracking systems and sheet metal fabrication.
