Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
Discussion of the idea of evaluating the effectiveness of blogs, and in particular, a set of metrics from Avinesh Kaushik:- "Raw Author Contribution (posts and words in post)
- Unique Blog Readers (content consumption - Unique Visitors and Feed Subscribers)
- Conversation Rate (measuring success in a social medium)
- Technorati "Authority" (measuring your impact on the world!)
- Cost (what!)
- Return on Investment (what's in it for you/your business)"
Measuring "your blog's outcome" is ridiculous. It's like measuring 'friendship'. measuring 'reflective moments'. As Beth Kanter says, "numbers and data alone are almost meaningless." I don't think they get a lot more meaningful even if you add them to qualitative data. Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog, May 17, 2007. [Link] [Tags: Web Logs, Newsletters] [Previous][Next]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
A loud amen! When I visit a blog and it has a little widget that tells me that it has 376 readers, I'm not impressed, I don't feel threatened, awed, validated... any of those things. I just don't "get" the concept of chasing the numbers. I like having readers, sure - they let me know when I'm talking piffle - but I'm not going to prostitute myself for a few more!
However, if I may make one humble suggestion - I would like to see you respond more to your commenters. That would foster the conversational aspect of the blogosphere.
Karyn Romeis [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
I agree with Karyn ...
However, I think that the critical factor is the reason for setting up the blog. Was it primarily business oriented - which I guess is what Kaushik is thinking of, or was it some other reason.
For me, I set up my blog initially as a sort of "bookmark on steroids" - for me. I hoped that my students might use it.
As time has gone on, so my readership has grown, though that's not really what interests me. (That said, now that I've installed Google Analytics, I'm not only amazed at the range of locations people come from, but also the link between the days that I make posts - and the days the traffic peaks. RSS rocks!
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
Stephen:
I agree with you that it is meaningless to use the numbers to get into "mine is bigger than yours" comparisons to measure quality or popularity.
However, I think you really missed the point about the usefulness of combining numbers with qualitative reflection on how to improve your blog. Whether you want to make money or educate people or just deepened your own learning -- setting some realistic benchmarks or goals, figuring out a way to determine if you reached them, and reflecting on why or why not - can lead to continuous improvements in the quality of your blog.
AND, if that leads to more readers, higher ranking, more subscribers, more comments - that's the icing on the cake! [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
> I would like to see you respond more to your commenters. That would foster the conversational aspect of the blogosphere.
I have mixed feelings about that.
One is that I like people who comment to have the last word. It always annoys me to see somebody always trying to get the last word in any debate.
Another is that I prefer to see conversation in the blogosphere proper rather than in comment threads.
Another is that I do respond, a lot, but in others' comment threads rather than my own. I have always disliked bloggers (even in our field) who (I could name them) read only their own comments and never anyone else's - much less comment in their blogs.
Finally, I want a way to integrate comments better with the full website. Right now you have to be searching for comments to see whether anyone has made one or replied. That makes them almost invisible. [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
> However, I think you really missed the point about the usefulness of combining numbers with qualitative reflection on how to improve your blog.
My post on measurement today (May 18, from Clark Aldrich) is a reply to this point. [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
Can you post the url with your response? [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
>I have always disliked bloggers (even in our field) who (I could name them) read
>only their own comments and never anyone else's - much less comment in their
>blogs.
How exactly would you know which blogger has read what comments on what blogs and whether or not they have left comments there? [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
>I have always disliked bloggers (even in our field) who (I could name them) read
>only their own comments and never anyone else's - much less comment in their
>blogs.
How exactly would you know who has read what comments on what blogs and whether or not they have left comments there? [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
> How exactly would you know which blogger has read what comments on what blogs and whether or not they have left comments there?
It's pretty easy to tell whether they've commented - the comments are either there or aren't there.
You can tell whether somebody has read posts or not by what they think is new, what they think has has or has not been said before, and of course if they actually cite references or quote people. It's not hard to tell. [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
> Can you post the url with your response?
Here it is: http://www.downes.ca/post/40213
As an aside - it appears that the comments are displaying in proper order. I'll have to look into that. Sorry about that. [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
Thanks, Stephen, for responding to my comment. I respect your point about wanting to allow your commenters the opportunity to have the last say, but on the flip side, if you don't comment back, they have no way of knowing whether or not they have been heard.
I'm not sure I could name the people who read only their own comments - perhaps none of those inhabit my corner of the globe - but I often find that the comment-versation is where the real action is!
Karyn Romeis [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
I agree with Karyn about conversation in comments being interesting - this one has been fascinating. As my own blog is sub-titled 'the tree that fell in the forest' you can work out that I am much more likely to get comments than have my posts picked up by other bloggers (I am just verifying my lack of pretensions here ;-) ).
Anyway the point that I wanted to make is that it seems to me (without much evidence) that the network of communication comprised by readers, commenters and bloggers seems to be much more inclusive that that comprised by A-list bloggers (who link to each other) and their readers.
I can understand why you, Stephen, exclude urls from comments but that too can be seen as counter to inclusion. [Comment]
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Re: Measuring Your Blog'S Outcomes and Use of Other Social Media Tools
Sorry didn't mean to be anonymous (thought I was logged in). The last post was from Frances Bell. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]
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