How to Measure The Success

of Your Business Blog

Let’s be honest: when it

comes to any form of

marketing, the bottom

line comes down to three little letters:

ROI.

Content marketing has been notoriously difficult to measure until recently. It wasn’t that long ago that marketers would blog for the sake of blogging.

Definition oF Business Blog Success

In a perfect world, your business

blog would make you tons of money and you’d spend your days on an

island without a care in the world.

It’s not that black and white with

blogging, as ROI comes in many

shapes and sizes.

Blogging might not instantly

make you money on the spot,

but it will lead to opportunitiesthat can make you money down the road.

Measurement of Success #1:

Web Traffic

One of the biggest indicators of blogging success lies within your web traffic. Your web traffic is quite easy to track with free tools such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics shows you an overview of your current traffic levels as well as where your traffic is coming from.

There are several sources of referral traffic to pay attention to when you’re blogging. Here are a few typical sources where referral traffic stems from, especially if you are repurposing your content:

● YouTube● Slideshare● Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)

● Industry blogs

To elaborate, industry blog referral

traffic occurs when others link to your content that is relevant,

valuable, and informational.

The other side of the web traffic success measurement is organic traffic. This means that your website is ranking on Google for specific keywords, and your customers are searching and successfully finding your blog or website.

Measurement of Success #2: Likes, Shares, Retweets, And Other Social Signals

When you are measuring the success of your business blog, consider the impact that your content makes on social media. Social shares may seem like a small detail, but it all adds up in the big picture of blog marketing.

Social shares matter for several reasons. First, it increases exposure and helps reach customers that may not have otherwise found. Second, it helps draw traffic to your website, which ties into the last measurement of success that we last talked about.

Pro Tip: Create a spreadsheet that documents the social shares of your blog on every platform that you use. As time goes by, you’ll get a good feel for the kind of content that your audience likes, shares, or retweets the most. From there, you can adjust your blogging strategy for developing content that performs well on a social level.

Measurement of Success #3: E-mail Sign Ups

In the world of internet marketing, the value of customer e-mails is priceless. When customers voluntarily sign up for your list, it’s safe to assume that they are interested in your product and what you have to say.

When you’re crafting a company blog post, the trick is to have the call-to-action as inputting an e-mail address. However, this isn’t always an easy battle to win. Companies have taken advantage of this and continuously e-mail their customers to the point of becoming spam. Now, people aren’t so willing to give up their e-mail addresses for nothing.

To get around this issue, consider offering a free downloadable to your audience in exchange for their e-mail. It doesn’t have to be anything super elaborate; a simple checklist can do the trick.

Measurement of Success #4: Visitor Behavior

Visitor behavior is a Google Analytics feature that allows you to track activity and clicks that occur while customers are on your website. When you are inside the dashboard of Google Analytics, you can view the activity of specific pages with the click of a button.

Pro Tip: Install the Google Analytics extension for Chrome. You can view the analytics (or visitor behavior) of a specific page without physically being inside of the dashboard. Just make sure you are logged into analytics so your results will load in the extension.

Measurement of Success #5: Visitor Retention

Visitor retention generally breaks down into two categories: bounce rate and pages/session.Bounce rate indicates how many additional pages your customer explores after viewing your blog.

The second visitor retention measurement is pages per session. How many pages (on average) are your customers viewing when they read your blog? The higher amount of pages per session per customer, the more depth and interest your content contains for them to continue digging.

Measurement of Success #6: Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of the easier measurements of success to track as long as you set conversions up right from the beginning. You can create a specific landing page that you link to from every blog post. When the customer clicks to that conversion page, you will be able to track this behavior with Google Analytics.

Keep in mind here that it all boils down to what you consider to be a lead. This can be the act of collecting a phone number, e-mail address, or generating a phone call. Either way, almost all forms of lead generation form your blog can be tracked.

Blogs are a great tool for moving your customers through the sales funnel. When you use your blog to educate your customers and help them make smart buying decisions, your blog will easily pay for itself.

Need help measuring the success of your business blog? Contact Busy Blogs Plus