Identify Success Metrics for Your Blog

Blog planning—Step 6 of 7

You must understand who your readers are, and what interests them, before you can write a blog that people will want to read. Identify criteria for success, and routinely evaluate your analytics, so you can tell whether or not your blog is making an impact on the people you want to reach.

Analytics can help you:

Learn which keywords people type in search engines to find your blog
Discover how many posts people look at when they visit
Find how many new people, vs. repeat visitors, read your blog
Understand where visitors come from
Determine the length of time people spend on your blog
Figure out which posts are most frequently viewed and which topics people care most about

There are two basic types of measurement

Quantitative measurement shows hard numbers, such as:

Pages per visit
Time on the site
Subscriptions
New vs. repeat visitors
Number of replies or comments
How people find your blog (search engines, other blogs, email, social media, social networks)

Qualitative measurement is more subjective and includes such things as:

Engagement with your customers
Suggestions
Anecdotal stories (such as helping solve someone’s problem)

Choose an analytics tool

Select one or two tools that work best for your needs. There are many free web analytics tools, including:

Bottom line

Analytics can help you to know whether all the work and time you are investing in your blog is worth it. Decide up-front what is most important to you (increased readership, more active conversations, etc.) and design your analytics to track those things and see if you’re making progress. Join or follow the Web Analytics Community of Practice of the Federal Web Managers Council to learn more about web analytics.

Now that you know what you need to succeed, the last planning step is to develop policies.

Review all steps at a glance on the How to Blog page.

Content Lead: Lisa Nelson
Page Reviewed/Updated: August 7, 2012