I'm a little bit fired up over this. I am tired of seeing articles such as this one (in the Financial Express) that essentially say, "Blogging could be a good activity for organizations. The problem is: the ROI can't be tracked."
That is just not the case. First of all, anything that happens online can be tracked. That is the beauty of the online world, as compared with the print world. Online, I can track clicks, navigation, time...you name it, I can track it. And guess what? Tracking doesn't have a high price tag. There are free, robust tools like Google Analytics available to anyone.
Tracking online is not something new to us when it comes to our website, our even email program. But for some reason, organizational blogging seems to present challenges that just shouldn't exist.
Of course at Compendium, we are able to use our own blogging software, and run a corporate blogging strategy ourselves. Not only can I tell you the average time on our blogs, the bounce rate, the most popular content, and the number of visits, I can tell you how many visitors take the next step. That's right, we offer a call-to-action on our blogs just like we do on our website.
From there, anyone who "converts" via the call-to-actions we provide is logged in our CRM system and is tracked through the prospect lifecyle until it results in a closed opportunity. And thus, we are able to track dollars and ROI.
Tracking isn't difficult to do, but the first step is acknowledging that it can and should be a part of every online activity, blogging included.
