Let’s be honest, despite the loftiest notions of content creators, a business blog is never going to win a Pulitzer. The next Booker prize isn’t going to be awarded to a blog post about the ins and out of finding the perfect dog house. And well, there’s a reason for that.
Business blogging isn’t about style, and it certainly isn’t about literary mastery. That’s not to say that your business blog can’t be unique, well-written, or heck, even a bit poetic at times. However, it is to say that business blogging is a very different type of writing.
Too many business owners get hung up on the idea that their content must be of the highest quality, causing them to lose sight of the actual purpose of their blog—to grow their business.
Your business blog should:
- Drive traffic to your website.
- Increase the value you’re offering to site visitors
- Increase conversions
- Attract new customers
- Increase brand awareness
And what do these things all have in common? They are measurable.
In a quantifiable age, there is little to be gained by judging your blog content based on your own subjective ideas of what makes that content good or bad. The quantitative measurement of quality, as it pertains to blogging, should, instead, be based on concrete, trackable metrics.
If you really want to determine your blog success, it’s time to kick your obsession with “quality” to the curb and start measuring the numbers that count.
Who’s Visiting Your Blog, and How Did They Get There?
If you want actionable insight into the success of a blog post, look at the visitors that post is attracting and how they got there.
To start with, look at how many of your visitors are new to the blog and how many are return visitors. This tells you a couple things.
- A boost in new visitors indicates that your promotional and SEO efforts are working and are attracting new readers (and potential customers) to your blog.
- Strong numbers of return readers indicate that the content you’re creating is interesting and valuable to your audience. An increase in these numbers means you’re doing something right.
Next, take a look at where those visitors are coming from. Are they visiting from your social media pages, seeking more in-depth information after browsing another page on your site, or coming in through search engine results? This information will tell you how your readers are arriving at your blog and also what content is effective in driving them there.
If a post about training your dog brought in tons of readers from your Facebook page, you’ll know that dog training is a popular topic and one you’ll probably want to revisit in the future.
Understanding who is reading your blog and how they’re finding it will help you further develop your content so that you can build a larger, more dedicated audience.
How Interested are Readers in Your Content?
One of the most telling markers of a successful blog is how long readers spend browsing your content. Do they stop with a single post, or do they keep clicking through, looking to see what else you have to offer?
Your goal isn’t to bring customers to your site to only read a single great post and leave. Instead, you want to enhance their interest in your content, your website, and your product so they stick around for awhile.
It’s especially useful to note whether or not a particular post is causing a higher exit rate than others. If so, that post may need to be removed or rewritten to help increase its value to your readers.
Generating interest in your business is, ultimately, what will lead to people making purchases. If your blog isn’t helping you do that, then it isn’t serving its purpose.
What are Visitors Engaging with?
If you want to know what content your readers really like, all you have to do is listen. Audience engagement is one of the best ways to determine how well your blog is actually doing.
What content receives the biggest reactions? What topics make your readers comment, share, like, and follow your calls to action?
In the end, it doesn’t matter how good you think a blog post is if no one cares to read it or engage with it. Your goal should be to generate as much interest as possible in your content, and measuring your social interactions is an excellent way to do discover the best strategies to do just that.
If you’re determining the success of your blog based on opinion or vague notions of “quality,” you’re doing yourself, and your business, a disservice. Take a step back and set some objective, measurable goals for your business blog. At the end of the day, what are you looking to achieve? Do you want to attract more customers, boost your SEO ranking, drive traffic to your website? By tracking how your blog content moves you closer to (or further from) those goals, you can get a true measurement of your blog’s success.
