Business blogging, and any well-executed content development plan, should involve testing and measuring results. To make your business blog perform you should track and analyze what happens after you publish each blog post. Compare your metrics against the goals you set when you started blogging and tweak your approach until you arrive at a satisfying outcome. Consider the following simple and effective methods for measuring your business blog’s performance and change your inputs if your results don’t match up with your expectations.
Test & Measure
- How many blog subscribers do you have? The total number of people who read your blog is correlated with the quality of your blog posts. However, you should look at the traffic going to individual posts to find out which topics are really of interest to your audience. Also, consider whether the regularity of your publications and your use of social media to promote your blog are influencing the number of visitors.
- Track blog comments. Not all visitor activity results in a comment on your blog posts, but absolutely no involvement could mean your blogs aren’t inspiring people to want to participate. Include calls to action at the end of your blog posts and your encouragement of readers will cause some to share their opinions.
- Study your conversion rates. The actions your website visitors are taking once they arrive point out areas of needed improvement. One of your top goals should include making your content generate leads.
- Assess the quality of inbound links. Links to your blog from outside sources direct people to it. The more authoritative those pages are, the better your content will rank in the search engines. If the sources of links are diverse and the trustworthiness high, your blog will be considered worth reading and sharing.
Change Your Input
Depending on the information you uncover through these varied measurements, you can make changes to your blog content or other areas of your website. Your subtle changes can cause vast improvements in the metrics you are tracking.
For instance, try including links to your blog on your home page, press releases, email signatures, eBooks and business cards.
Please let us know what changes have been working for you in the comments section below.
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About David Chevalier
David Chevalier is a founder of SalesBlend. He helps small businesses grow with creative marketing strategies and consistent execution. You can follow David on Twitter @davidchev or on Google+.