Business blogging without measuring results is a waste of time.
Business blogging without measuring results is a waste of time. That said, there are so many metrics that you COULD track, you could end up overwhelming yourself with data and leaving yourself time to actually blog. So… we recommend focusing on the major metrics that can help save you time and hone your blogging to generate more leads.
Measuring Visitors
Start by measuring the most fundamental (and important) of metrics…visitor count. Google Analytics will quickly supply the information you need for any timeframe.
While tracking your blog visitor count like the stock market is fun, it takes a little digging in to the data to get some actionable insight. Look at your five most successful blog posts. What do they have in common? Is there a common topic? Were your images better? Did a Twitter follower tweet a link to the posts? How many Facebook friends “liked” the post on your wall? Now use this insight to refine and improve your future posts.
Measuring Leads
We’re sure (most of) you are not investing the time to blog for your health. The success of a business blog should be measured by its results. And the results you want are leads. “Sometimes a post may not get a ton of visits but still generate lots of leads. Without looking at the leads metric, a marketer might easily dismiss the less viewed post as a failure when that shouldn’t necessarily be the case. Look at the leads you generate from blog posts. Also examine at what rate those leads convert into customers compared to other marketing channels.” (Business Blogging, Hubspot)
Subscriber Counts
It takes more than reading one blog article for a person to develop an understanding of your expertise and credibility within your industry. Giving readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog either via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or via email is a common characteristic of a well-planned blog. Tracking the number of people subscribing to your blog provides a solid indicator of the quality and consistency of your content. Your subscribers act as the base readership of your content and can help spread it to others.
Inbound Links
An “inbound link” is a link that originates from another website or blog and links to a page or post on your site. Search engines use inbound links as an indication of authority and content quality which in turn influences how pages appear and rank in search engine results. As blog posts are normally educational rather than product-centric, they are great at generating inbound links and, subsequently, search traffic.
Track how many inbound links each of your blog posts attracts. Different types of blog posts and topics will be more successful than others. That is… some will drive more inbound links than others. Looking at these metrics for each post will guide you as you determine which topics and types of posts should be included in your content strategy for your blog.
Social Media Shares
Tweet, pin, like. Social media can drive traffic to your site and bring new eyes to your blog. Remember to keep titles within Tweet size limits (less than 140 characters) and be sure to include photos and images that will help attract interest on Facebook and be pinned on Pinterest. Then track the activity around each post to decide which topics and types of posts seem to be most interesting to your followers. Use Facebook Insights and third-party twitter analysis tools to make life easier.
This article is an excerpt from our eBook: An Introduction to Blogging for Businesses. The entire eBook is available as free PDF download.
