Buzzgain » blogging

List of 21 blogging objectives and how to measure them with examples

Mukund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:11:17 +0000

My friend Jeremiah sent a tweet about a discussion he had with his friend, about goals for their corporate blog. I did some research and found some list of goals without measurable objectives. So I thought it would be best to create a list.

As I started to write this list, I found it to be more of a why blog list than a list of goals for your blogs. Also since there are personal and corporate blogs, I put a P against goals that are personal in nature and C against those that are more corporate.

Feel free to add / change etc. The best post on blog metrics actually comes from another friend Avinash Kaushik.

1. (P,C) Be a thought leader: E.g. Charlene Li.

Measure: # of comments, incoming links to your blog, Google Pagerank

2. (C or P) Generate more leads: E.g.HubSpot

Measure: # of unique readers, # of Pageviews and conversion

3. (C,P) Generate awareness in the market of your products / services / your personal brand: E.g. Chris Brogan

Measure: # of unique readers

4. (C, P) Get to know other thought leaders in the space: E.g.Don Dodge

Measure: # of incoming and outgoing links, # of comments / post

5. (C) Humanize your company or Give a personal face to your corporation:Lionel Menchaca

E.g. Measure: # of comments per post, post frequency

6. (C,P) Get to network with other like-minded individuals: E.g. Paul Dunay

Measure: # of conversation “ripples” – How many people digg you, bookmark you on delicious, etc.

disclaimer: Paul is an advisor to BuzzGain

7. (C) Communicate frequently to your audience – (customers, partners, employees, recruits, etc.): E.g. GM Fast lane

Measure: # of RSS subscribers, # of RSS subscribers that read your post (audience reach), audience growth

8. (P) Generate a source of income from your writing: E.g. Darren Rowse

Measure: # pageviews, CPM, Monthly revenue

9. (P) Obtain feedback from your audience (readers, customers etc.) on new products / services: E.g.Guy Kawasaki

Measure: # Comments, Audience participation on polls

10. (C, P) Make sure you appear blog appears for specific terms on organic search (Search Engine Optimization): E.g. Aaron Wall

Measure: Google pagerank, # of search terms your blog appears in the top 10 organic search results

11. (C, P) Find and share new information / content with your audience: E.g. Scobleizer

Measure: # of RSS subscribers, # of conversation “ripples” – How many people digg you, bookmark you on delicious, etc.

12. (P) Give an avenue to your creative writing (hidden talent: E.g. Dooce

Measure: # of conversation “ripples” – How many people digg you, bookmark you on delicious, etc.

13. (C, P) Be recognized as a source of breaking and exclusive news and information: E.g.TechCrunch

Measure: # pageviews, Audience reach in target (of your potential readership, how many are actually reading your posts)

14. (P) Keep in touch with friends, family and acquaintances: E.g.Balancing Motherhood blog

Measure: Email responses to posts, Discussion at family gatherings

15. (C, P) Win awards / recognition for your writing : E.g.Mashable

Measure: # of pageviews, audience growth

16. (C) Make sure you let your customers and partners know what’s going on in a quicker fashion than press releases: E.g. Jonathan Schwartz

Measure: # of RSS subscribers, # of incoming links to your blog

17. (C,P) Increase engagement with your readers: E.g. A VC (Fred Wilson)

Measure: # of incoming links, # of conversation “ripples” – How many people digg you, bookmark you on delicious, etc.

18. (C, P) To get your point of view on topical trends, out to your audience: E.g. Mathew Ingram

Measure: # of incoming links, # pageviews

19. (C, P) To encourage ideas, conversation and dialog: E.g. Paul Graham

Measure:# of comments / post, source of your incoming audience, incoming search term links

20. (P) To offer an alternative source of information for niche topics that get ignored by main stream media: E.g. Shai Agassi

Measure: audience growth, target audience reach

21. (C) To offer a means for customer support, and proactive issue resolution for known support problems. E.g: Webshots Customer Support Blog

Measure: Audience repeat visits, Time to resolve queries, # of support calls avoided due to proactive communication

5 top categories of ideas / topics to blog about

Mukund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:19:08 +0000

If you have a corporate blog and are getting stuck trying to figure out what to write, we have have some suggestions from the experts, and also a set of them on our own:

First the experts:

1. Chris Brogan: 100 Blog topics to write about and 50 blog topic ideas.

2. Lois Kelly. 17 blog worthy topics

3. 101 great posting ideas.

4. Performancing: 10 ideas for your next blog post.

5. RSS blog specifications 10 places to get blog post ides.

6. Pay Doyle. 23 ideas for blog posts.

So what are the top 5 categories of posts that are useful for corporate blogs:

1. Exclusive Interviews with news makers. Either within your company or other industry experts. Almost everyone loves

2. Industry trends and information: This includes new ideas, challenging problems still facing the industry as a whole and other related topics to your industry.

3. Tools and technology reviews: Always one for the tech savvy folks in your audience.

4. Content and Event reviews – A review of books, new whitepaper, etc. Or a review of conferences, seminars and industry events is always a good draw for folks that did not attend the show.

5. Tips, tricks and how to: If you figured something out remember its worth writing about since there are at least 40% of the folks in the industry (more likely 60-80%) who will benefit from your learning.

What do you think?

image: Real Estate Tomato

5 simple tips for hosting a great blogger event

Mukund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:52:11 +0000

Robert pointed me to 19 things to consider when planning a blogger launch event by the Mobile industry review. I read through it left with very mixed feelings. On one hand it was pretty open and clear about things they like or dont like. On the other hand they seemed like a bunch of prima donna’s asking for free handsets, asking hosts to pay attention to food. Anyway it got me thinking about the blogger events we have hosted and what we learned from them.

When we hosted blogger outreach events at my previous company the question always comes up about a) What are the best things to do and b) how do you measure the success of such an event. So I thought I’d take a stab at 5 simple tips to being a great host for a blogger event.

1. Figure out the level of your bloggers and cater to their specific need: Tech bloggers like to actually play with the products, see demos, etc. The last thing you want to do with this crowd is to put 30 min PowerPoint slides upfront about your company, culture, market etc. If the bloggers are more strategic in their thinking and not the hands-on type, it makes more sense to provide access to C-level executives who can provide their opinions on the market, stategy, etc.

2. Location and time matter a lot: This is an obivious one, but where you host your event tells a lot about the importance you place to the event. I would highly recommend hosting your blogger event at your company. Pick a relatively large sized room and keep the number of attendees from your company to about 1/2 the number of bloggers invited. With respect to time, most full-time bloggers prefer lunch or late evening (early pizza) times, but dont attempt breakfast blogger sessions. Having tried 3 I can tell you they always start late, end late and mess up the rest of the day.

3. Giveaways: Highly recommend keeping them consistent with the brand and theme of your product / company. We hosted 2 blogger events and had a nice table top logo bean plant giveaway and a flash drive with the press release, latest whitepaper and product details pre loaded on them.

4. Measurement of effectiveness: The only measurement we did was to learn how many of the 21 bloggers invited to the first event showed up, how many blogged about the event and what the general sentiment was. The bloggers collectively had an audience of about 35,000 unique visitors and the cost of the event was about $1500. The total number of bloggers that wrote about the event was 11 (18 of the 21 invited showed up). The collective audience of the ones that did write about the event was about 8900. Treat it as any other press event. There were other benefits we got from the event – good will, some link love, but those were more difficult to measure.

5. The right people attending and available to answer questions. Believe me, most bloggers are there more for learning and sharing than for the food. The best thing you can provide to them is access to the right people in the company that will be able to build that connection with them so they can understand more about the company, the culture and products. Depending on the type and level of audience, make the right folks from your company available to discuss with them.