You have to know why you're blogging

         

           Determining the success of your blog depends on the ‘why’ and ‘what for’ of your blog. Metrics can provide a sense of what’s working, where readers are coming from, and what keywords are driving traffic to your blog, but you need to have a sense of what you’re trying to accomplish with your blog. You need to define your KPI’s. Learning not only how to understand the metrics but also how to apply the results will put you in a clear advantage. If you’re blogging for content, goals and metrics should be focused on areas that reflect traffic and SEO results. If you’re blogging for commerce, metrics should be focused around conversion and success of a call to action button to send traffic to register or purchase on another site. When you’re blogging to increase a community, metrics should be focused around readership and interaction.

            Many programs and colleges within higher ed. have blogs that are used for recruitment and community purposes. Bloggers may be students, faculty, staff, and/or administration. Metrics that reveal more information about readership and interaction center around repeat visitors, RSS subscribers, comments, referrers, and shares.  Kaushik suggests “Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success” and I’ll add a few more to the list.

            Initially, author contribution should be considered as in: the number of posts divided by the number of months you have been blogging and number of words in the post divided by the number of posts.  Do you have enough content to get noticed? Regardless of what your audience desires, consistency is the key. Expectations should be defined and communicated particularly when different contributors are representing the community blog.

            Next, you should track visits and returning visitors. The latter is a great metric to watch because it gives you an idea of the kind of loyalty that's developing within your audience. Similarly, you may want to watch your RSS/Feed subscribers as a measure of your audience growth.  Subscribers are the ultimate goal as they are visitors who have given you the permission to push content to them. They want to be part of your community. “This segment allows you to “expand the top of your funnel,” and draw people back to your website consistently.” (Liubarets, 2013)

            To determine how people found your site, review the ‘keywords’ and ‘referrers’ reports. You can then use these keywords within your blog text or titles to gain even more traffic. Referrers can greatly increase your organic search, so you want to determine if they found your blog as a result of a Google keyword search or from another site. Thinking about other related programs/ departments within the university that could link to your blog should not be overlooked as it could develop into a mutually beneficial relationship.

            I also like to track conversation rates after setting up goals in my analytics. This is a calculation of the number of visitor comments divided by the number of posts. For me, this is the ROI of the blog. Getting visitors engaged enough to actually comment puts meaning into the term social media. Comments with more than a few sentences are of course most rewarding, but just the fact that you are engaging the audience into conversation is rewarding.

            ‘Page Views’ is another report that provides clues as to popular content ideas. A visitor may come to your blog and see a new post about GMAT prep tips. If they then look in your blog index for additional test tip articles, you know that this is a topic of particular interest. Which blog posts are getting shared? In contrast, a visitor may click on the most recent post and then click to four other unrelated posts before leaving the blog which may indicate a need to spend time creating more quality content that your target audience will find value in. Over time, you can also get a sense of timing for different topics. Is there a correlation to trending topics relative to application deadlines? This report can be reviewed along with ‘visitor flow’ to get a clear picture of how and why people are exploring your blog site.

            Perhaps most importantly, look at ROI. Is your blog referring visitors to your website or to your ‘request for information’ form? Goals can be established and measured under conversions. There is also the unquantifiable value. Giving the students a voice, getting free content, having an opportunity to listen to your constituents concerns and viewpoints is difficult to put a dollar value on but is invaluable from a marketer’s perspective. Never before have we had such an opportunity to hear what our customers actually want and think.

            All of these metrics are interesting, but without defined goals to measure against, the metrics aren’t nearly as useful as they could be. Probably the main goal for blogs in higher ed. is to get individuals to ‘request further information’ by completing contact information into a form. Google analytics is a bit limited when it comes to metrics for content. Plug-ins can be added to supplement information. Google Page Value is useful in this scenario as the decision to return to school can take a year or two which may equate to many page visits before the actual call to action. What Page Value does it attribute a value to each page visited on the site during the course of a user converting. Between the content report and the Page Value, one can determine which content is driving conversions. (Norris, 2013)

          “If you create consistently good content, and promote it vigorously, your blog should eventually succeed. But, to ensure you aren’t disheartened in the meantime, select success metrics that are appropriate for your goals.”  (Baer, n.d.). Evaluate metrics in relation to other metrics as if they were each just one piece of the puzzle to get the best analysis.

References:

 

Baer, J. (n.d.). How to Match 10 Key Success Metrics to Your Blogging Strategy. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from Convince & Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/web-site-analytics-and-metrics/how-to-match-10-key-success-metrics-to-your-blogging-strategy/

Gunelius, S. (n.d.). 10 Blog Metrics Bloggers Should Track Through Web Analytics Tools. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from About.com: http://weblogs.about.com/od/addonsandplugins/tp/10-Blog-Metrics-Bloggers-Should-Track-Through-Web-Analytics-Tools.htm

Kaushik, A. (2007, November 19). Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from Occam's Razor: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/blog-metrics-six-recommendations-for-measuring-your-success/

Liubarets, T. (2013, July 23). Blogging Metrics: How to Find and Apply Actionable Intelligence. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from Writtent.com: http://writtent.com/blog/blogging-metrics-how-to-find-and-apply-actionable-intelligence/

Norris, D. (2013, March 18). Using Google Analytics to determine if your content is generating leads. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from wp curve: http://wpcurve.com/content-marketing-for-lead-generation/