Measuring Blog Importance & Influence

Sigh, each new PR opportunity always seems to bring us back to one of our biggest problems—measurement.

But the posts below on aggregators and the Edelman/Intelliseek white paper remind us of the need for a broader view of ranking and rating blogs, as well as a qualitative approach to determining their importance and influence.

The quantitative measurements—traffic levels, inbound links and posting frequency—are certainly one approach, but keep content quality in mind. Numbers, including traffic levels and RSS feed subscriptions, can be misleading. Unfortunately, many race to use this measurement because it is easy to come up with and it eliminates the immediate need to actually read the blog they are analyzing.

Remember that most blogs are providing niche content. This means smaller, more targeted audiences with people that are more likely to listen are visiting. Be sure to go one step further in your analyses of which blogs are important to your clients/industries.

Blogs are the Dais of the Internet
Instead of comparing a blog’s influence to a number not unlike a trade magazine’s circulation, you should dig deeper. It is understandable that this occurs. Print media are still trying to bolt this metric onto their online offerings...and after all, this is push-button PUBLISHING.

But perhaps we should instead consider a blog to be a presentation at an industry trade show. People are showing up to a blog, or a presentation, as they have an expressed interest in this content. Not to mention, a few hundred folks attending a presentation can be pretty impactful.

Blogs are the dais of the Internet. Is your audience listening?

The following post is based, in part, on an e-mail exchange on blog content with Jeremy Pepper at POP! Public Relations.

Comments

[Chris Thilk]

Could not agree with your points more. Statistics and circulation numbers will only be worth as much as the faith that is put into them. Standards used to generate them are not consistent from one publication to the next, much less one blog to the next. There is only so much that can be learned from numbers. That's why reading the content is so important: Only that can give you the sense of how influential a blog is.

--Chris

[Kevin Dugan]

Thanks Chris.

Of course, we will probably only raise more questions than create answers with these discussions, but it's a start.

Historically, PR measurement has been a seemingly unsolvable problem with no agreement on one approach to merchandising what we do. Only recently has marketing started to add more science to the art and, even then, P&G gave the industry a C+ on their efforts thus far.

[Chris]

The metrics get even harder to measure when you figure in RSS subscriptions. I don't know that there's anyone taking those numbers into account when trying to divine online numbers.

--Chris

[Katie Paine]

As someone who has been measuring tangible results from PR programs for two decades for companies like Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, ING Direct, and many others, I have to take exception to the notion that PR is an "unsolvable problem." And Blog Measurement is certainly not unsolvable. The problem is that most PR people don't prioritize measurement, and don't make the time to measure the content and impact of their work. Blog measurement is in many ways simpler than media measurement since we already have systems to capture the data and anlyze the content for tone, messages, positioning, and a host of other attributes that one can glean from simply reading the postings. The far more difficult aspect it to ascertain the changes in relationships that can come from blogs and other consumer generated media. To do this we need to use the work of scholars like James Grunig, Linda Hon and others who have written extensively on how to measure relationships.
I like the idea of a blog as a dias, but its actually more like a booth in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. You keep coming back because of the relationships you establish with the owner, and the value of the goods (information) you receive.

[Kevin Dugan]

Katie - Welcome and thanks for stopping by.

I called it a *seemingly* unsolvable problem. As you note on your blog… http://tinyurl.com/43ahd …PR people do not prioritize measurement. They do not like measurement and, based on the pitches I receive, I assume that not enough people take the time to analyze content despite the fact that it’s right there in front of them. This post is directed at them and focused on blog metrics.

Even I need to take my own advice from time to time. But to be clear, I will note that quantitative measurements are necessary, I am just emphasizing the need for qualitative alongside them to come up with the best possible findings in this instance. This is not always the case in public relations; my favorite example is ad equivalency.

Right now, ad equivalency is one of the primary approaches to public relations metrics that is widely recognized and discussed in our industry. You and I know that ads are not equal to editorial placements, so to out this per pound metric on editorial placements does not help us. Not to mention it is only one facet of what we do.

Back to quantitative measurements...I’ve talked about the need for them in marketing for some time now.

At Fast Company’s blog “Marketing with Both Sides of the Brain”
http://tinyurl.com/5a74e

And here “Measurement Gets Serious”
http://tinyurl.com/6y4r9

“Marketing--Art or Science?”
http://tinyurl.com/6qmbe

The overall takeaway from the above links is that marketing and PR need not only to invest in measurement, they need to consider it as more than the end game.

Unless you employ it at the front end, you're usually left with quantitative data that might not show success. Ads might use readership surveys, public relations can use ad equivalency, Web sites rely on traffic logs and trade shows count card swipes.

It all starts at the beginning with research to create a benchmark you can measure performance against. Select one primary metric that can be consistently tracked across all efforts. From there, you create measurable objectives. Then keep all tactics focused on clearly supporting your strategies and objectives. These steps put you in a position to really prove your worth and defend your budget.

But I defer to you for additional insight here. Between your Web site, blog and thought leadership in this area, I am quick to note I am in over my head in discussing this with you. And I'm always willing to learn—even if it means admitting I am wrong!

[Katie Paine]

We are totally on the same wavelength. I'm on a personal crusade to wipe out Ad Equivalency as a measure.. at the very least replace it with a "Cost per Message Communicated" number that actually tells you something.
What I find fascinating is that when you poll the profession, 61% say they think measurement is an important part of the PR process and 69% say they do it.. so my "menaces" who hate measurement are technically in the minority. I think the problem is that PR people aren't used to basing their decisions on data, and so don't know what to ask for, or how to use that data when you get it. For example, if your blog measurement data says that an analysis of the comments show that your relationships are deterioriating as a results of an series of postings, what do you do with that information?