In marketing there are only really two rules:

1. Do something (legal).
2. Do it better next time.

Since only about 20% of companies have a blog, the vast majority of companies are breaking rule one.  Of the 20% that do have a blog, rule 2 is a problem, probably because it’s hard to get posts online with a full business schedule.  One key to getting long term ROI from your blog is to focus on continuous improvement.  Here are a few places you can look to improve:

Repeat Visitors: Is the number of repeat visitors going up or is it stuck?  Repeat visits are key to building traffic, and with traffic comes leads and sales.

Engagement: What percentage of your visitors make a comment, email you or share an article? Are they just reading or are they participating?

Links: How often are your articles referenced by other bloggers and mentioned on social networks and forums?  Links are critical to getting traffic and higher rank on Google because they show your site is a trusted authority.

Quality: What grade would an English professor give your posts? Are you getting straight A’s or not?

Conversions: Are you consistently getting leads from every article you post? Is that number trending up or down?

Topic Effectiveness: Look at how well your blog performs based on the topic you write about.  Eliminate under performers.

What do you think the most important metrics are to help drive continuous improvement on your blog?

Mike Seidle

Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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