Blogs- “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Monday, October 1st, 2007
Each century has seen its media revolution and blogs are clearly the media revolution of this new century. Thanks to advances in technology that have made it incredibly easy and virtually free to create them, turning both the communications and PR measurement world upside down. More and more independent bloggers — be it journalists, experts or just irregular bloggers like me — are taking to the Internet to put forward their views to anyone who will listen. A new blog is created about once every two seconds. But despite its strong growth, blogging is not yet a very widely used medium.
People in the business of communication envision this as yet another medium to address stakeholders and PR researchers work hard on strategies and innovative approaches to leverage blogs. The problem with measuring blogs is not how to do it, but rather that the nature of blogs renders management impossible. You simply can’t “manage” what 10 million independent-minded, opinionated people are going to say. Age old thoughts of counting the volume of conversions or the number of trackbacks is one indication of the size and scope of the network surrounding the blog. Examining the credibility and authority of the people who are commenting and/or linking to the site is another way to assess the impact and importance of the blog. One needs to look beyond just quantity of postings or links to the quality of the dialog. Dennis G. Jerz of Seton Hill University has categorized blogs in the following manner:
- “Coverage” — The number of times your brand or issue is mentioned.
- “Depth” — How deeply does the posting discuss the brand?
- “Interaction” — What was the nature of the interaction? Was the posting designed to solve a problem, compare different brands, or simply allow the author to rant?
- “Discussion” — What was the nature of the discussion? Was it a true dialog with extensive exchange of ideas, or was it just bantering back and forth.
To determine what readers are taking away from a blog, the medium offers several interesting opportunities for measurement. What your customers say about you in the chat rooms, news groups and blogs presumably reflects what they think about you. So in essence, paying close attention to what is being said in the blogosphere is a great way to get inside your customers….
(Inspired by Katie Delahaye Paine and Andy Lark, The Measurement Standard)