At
Compendium, we get a lot of questions about the kinds of metrics and goals that
organizations should think about when it comes to blogging.
And despite the fact that a lot of people don’t know what an RSS feed IS let alone how to use one, several companies seem to be of the mindset that the number of subscribers is the best way to gauge the success of the blog.
Well, unless you’re a publisher, that’s a bunch of baloney, and I’m here to tell you why.
Even if you are the funniest, most perceptive human being alive, it’s unlikely you’re your prospects are going to read your blog over and over again, day in day out. And the important question is: why would you want them to?
If you think about it, using RSS subscribers as your basis for success is comparable to using returning web visitors as your all-telling metric for your website. It’s a bit laughable, when you think about it. The way you measure success on your website is (or hopefully is) conversion, and guess what? You should be in the same mentality when it comes to your organization’s blogs.
I am not saying that returning visits or RSS subscribers should be ignored – quite simply, they are not the most important or telling metrics. Maybe I will return to your blog or your website three times – heck, even thirteen—before I’m ready to take the next step, but the key here is that you have to tell me what the next step is, and make it easy for me to do it. Thus, a conversion. And if you could get me to convert after three visits versus thirteen, that would be a good thing, right? So if you think about it in this way, people who are returning day after day to read your blog—and not doing anything else—may not be as desirable as people who read, get a bit of info, and move on.
An important part of this is the kind of blogging platform that you use—does it make it easy to include conversion points—but the most important aspect is knowing up front that no matter what anyone has told you in the past, RSS subscribers is not necessarily what you should be blogging for…
