In the digital marketing world there is no shortage of things to measure, analyze, and report on. It is all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of data your site generates. That being said, I’ve never become more lost in data then when I first began trying to assess the value of blogging. It seemed easy at first – look at visits and CTA clicks and you’re done – but I soon learned there are a plethora of ways to grade a blog.
Luckily for you, you don’t have to stumble through the data like I did. Take a look at the metrics below and decide what is important to you – and perhaps more importantly become aware of the ways certain metrics can mislead you.
What are your blogging goals?
First things first, data should inform all of your digital marketing initiatives. So, if you are in the process of beginning a blog, you should have a goal or two in mind. Maybe you want to increase your website traffic, or more thoroughly engage your returning site visitors, or create a digital resource where customers can find answers to their commonly asked questions. Whatever your goals may be, they should be your first measurement of success. Before jumping into these metrics, write out one or two of your goals, so you have some idea of how measurement can help you succeed.
1. Organic Visits to Website
One of the most common measurements of blog success is organic traffic. Creating indexable website pages related to your products and services can help increase your search engine rankings leading to an increase in organic visits to your website. Furthermore, creating pages that answer specifically searched questions can help you capture new visitors without necessarily discussing your products and services.
If you are performing the proper keyword research, you should see a big increase in the number of organic visits to your site after five to six months of blogging.
Problems with measurement:
A blog post that ranks well with search engines and receives a significant amount of organic traffic is not necessarily a good post. Your blog post could be getting hundreds of visits a month, but if it is not converting any of those visitors, is it really valuable to your company?
The worst thing you can do is create a high-ranking post that has little to know value to readers. Instead of establishing yourself as a valuable resource, you’ll establish yourself as an unreliable source of information. You’ll gain traffic, but you will be giving that traffic a bad first impression of your brand.
2. Overall Visits to Blog
Organic traffic isn’t the only kind of traffic a blog post can drive. If you are active on social media, you should promote your blog posts on the relevant channels. If you have an email list, you should be sending your blog posts to the appropriate customers and leads. And if your website contains more pages than just your blog pages, you should be creating relevant user paths to your posts.
When measuring the success of your blog, look at the overall visits it receives each month. Ignore your overall website traffic and just look to the blog. Are you seeing a return on your investment? (Remember it takes time to build a blog, so you may not see a return right away.)
Problems with measurement:
The amount of visits your blog receives is not necessarily indicative of success or failure. If you are not properly promoting your blog, you may be receiving a low amount of views even though your content is fantastic. Conversely, you might be amazing at writing catchy headlines and preview copy, leading to a plethora of blog visits when your content is sub par.
3. Blog Conversion Rate
Another major goal commonly associated with blogging is lead generation. If you aren’t using your blog posts to guide possible customers down the sales funnel, you are missing a huge opportunity. If you have a CTA and a content offering in place on your blog posts, a good measurement of success is how well the blog is converting your visitors into leads. How many CTA clicks does a specific blog post have? How many leads has your blog directly generated as a whole? How many leads as your blog generated inadvertently (a visitor started on your blog page, visited another page or two and filled out a lead form their). These are important questions to ask while putting time and energy towards your blog.
Problems with measurement:
If your CTA is poorly done, if your landing page is sloppy, if your content offer isn’t relevant to your blog topic, and if your form is asking too much, your blog may not perform well in terms of conversions. Be sure that you don’t jump to conclusions in assuming your blog post is a huge success or failure when success or failure might lie with another aspect of your digital marketing efforts.
4. Current Customers Interacting with Blog
When reporting on blog metrics many marketers stick to traffic generated and lead conversions made, but a HUGE benefit to having a blog is that you can provide your current customers and leads (people who might already visit your site on a regular basis) with a constant source of information on your industry.
Providing this service will help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, help drive brand awareness, and lead to one-time customers becoming loyal customers. Thus, another measurement of your blog’s success is how many leads and customers interact with your blog – regardless of if a blog post was directly responsible for a conversion or not.
To measure this, simply make a list of your current leads and customers and add a it requirement of “has visited at least one blog page.”
Problems with measurement:
If your blog is only a few months old, you may not have many interactions from customers and leads. Give your blog some time to grow before you start measuring this one.
5. Blog Subscribers
When writing blog posts, you may frequently ask yourself if your writing is any good. Sure your blog is driving traffic to your site, sure it is converting visitors to leads. But how do you know if your writing is actually entertaining and informative?
The metric your looking for here is subscriber generation. And it is definitely something you’ll want to report on.
Subscribers are a great indicator of whether or not your blog contains, useful, relevant information and keeps the reader engaged. A subscriber is someone who enjoyed reading one or more of your blog posts so much, that they have decided to receive email notifications every time you publish a post.
The more email subscribers you have, the more people you can send your blog notification emails to and the more people will read, like, share, and convert on your blog posts.
Problems with this measurement:
We are bombarded day after day after day with hundreds of emails. Asking someone to agree to receive a few more is a big ask. Even if your blog is fantastic, not many individuals are going to plug their email into your subscriber form unless you find a way to put it directly in front of them – maybe a few different times.
If you aren’t making an effort to capture new subscribers, don’t expect your list to grow by an impressive rate.
Speaking of Blog Subscribers…
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