Blogs: Setting Goals and Measuring Success

Why Do You Want To Blog? Look inside the company Needs Wants Other marketing and PR actions

Who Are You Targeting? Blog creators more likely to be: Men: 57% are male Young: 48% are under age 30 Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000 Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees They have characteristics of “opinion leaders” Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, May 2, 2005

Set Your Goals For A Blog Build community Give a voice to the company Make the company more accessible Be a thought leader Become an industry news source Media coverage Search visibility Brand lift Web Traffic Leads/Sales

Search Visibility and Brand Awareness Search engine listings stimulate brand recall by a 3-to-1 margin over banner advertising and other online marketing methods. Source: Search Engine Visibility Study 2004 Enquiro Research

Search and Brand Value

Brand Value and Search Results The 2001 NPD Group study reported that search listings were better at branding and produced more sales than banner ads. The 2001 NPD Group study A 2004 IAB study also reported brand lift from SERPs, especially for prominent listings. A 2004 IAB study

BTI Communications Limited A small privately owned company vs Big Corporations in VoIP phone technology

August 2004 Problem: Faced with fierce competition in a rapidly expanding market - VoIP No search visibility at all Small budget

Solution – A blog with RSS feeds Evaluated platforms and results Myst Technologies - Blogsite.com Offers RSS feeds Offers reporting tools Gets excellent results

Set a Goal for the Blog Get Search Engine Visibility in the face of the increasing competition Drive traffic to the corporate website Get media coverage

First Blog Keyword research VoIP Small Business VoIP benefits VoIP business phones VoIP vs traditional phones

Three months later 50 page one results in Google 42% increase in traffic to corporate website

Second Blog Problem: No top 30 visibility on the phrase Business phone systems Solutions: Started a blog with this name

March 2005 #1 Voip vs traditional phone system #1 VoIP solution provider #2 VoIP small business #2 VoIP architecture #5 VoIP phone equipment #6 VoIP benefits #7 VoIP Small Business costs

August 2005 #1 Voip vs traditional phone system #3 VoIP solution provider #3 VoIP small business #2 and #3 VoIP architecture #2 VoIP phone equipment #3 and #4 VoIP benefits #6 VoIP business phone system

Top Phrases Driving Traffic to the Blog Search Term Voip small business Voip architecture Voip telephones Voip business phone system Voip benefits Small business voip Voip equipment Voip trends Voip challenges Voip Business communications

Traffic increase to corporate website Three months – 42% Six Months – 68% One Year – 78%

PR Value and Media Relations: Using News Engines and RSS Create a blog and a feed for journalists

Results in Traditional Media CIO Magazine SMB Trends Hispanic Business Magazine CMO Magazine says BTI Dancing with the Elephants

Results From zero online visibility to over 120 page one results Page one visibility on keywords that others pay over $5 a click for 78% increase in corporate website traffic Leads coming from the Internet for the first time

TimeShare Website

Time Share Owners blog Launched

His blog provided “news I can’t find elsewhere” about Hurricane Dennis

Site’s link popularity shot up from 39,017 on 5/23 to 85,385 on 7/26 Source: Marketleap, July 26, 2005

Site’s # 1 rankings up from 34 to 60, top 10 rankings up from 205 to 290 Source: Ranking-Manager, July 26, 2005

Site’s Alexa ranking improved from # 33,229 on 5/23 to # 17,438 on 7/30

Goal: Position the company as a concerned organization and address the issues of our audience. Build a loyal following Brand Value Stonyfield Farm BLOG "Cow"munities

Four Blogs Baby Babble Strong Women Daily News Creating Healthy Kids Bovine Bugle

Reasons for Blogging CEO buy in Small Budget Easily identifiable niche markets in their audience A tradition of guerrilla marketing A company with a point of view – an opinion

Results Strong Women Summits Loyal readership Lots of media attention for the blogs Brand lift due to positive impressions

Challenges Get acceptance and buy in from the top Have a clear goal for the blog Make sure the execs understands what the blog does and what it doesn’t do If lead generation is the goal, make sure you have a way to capture the leads from the traffic to the blog and the website

Resources Expansion Plus Website Content Strategy Blog PRESSfeed Blogsite

Contact Details Sally Falkow

Metrics Beyond Google Bloglines: 659,633,434 Articles Indexed Blogpulse: 15,280,165 feeds Feedster: 12,824,313 feeds Pubsub: 14,606,427 sources, 8m active Technorati: 15.4m feeds indexed Del.icio.us: tags, urls and people feeds Flickr: tag and people’s feeds Alexa: visits to a site based on toolbar installs/visits

Key Word, URL & Tag Searches Key words: your company, your competitors, key words that matter URLs: yours, your competitor’s Tag searches: yours, your competitor’s, key words of interest People searches

The Blogosphere: what are you searching?

Google links Stonyfield: Shows 256 to stonyfield.com/weblog BTI: Shows 34 to blog.btigroup.com Note the lack of time awareness in Google…

Subscription metrics Bloglines Must subscribe to feed to see subscription numbers Feedburner Must run your feed through Feedburner Subscription numbers only available to feed owner Example: Boing Boing In Bloglines, 26,856 subscribers In Feedburner, 1.2 million subscribers to feed Difference: Feedburner shows all subscriptions where as Bloglines shows just those who use Bloglines reader and subscribe

URL lookups in Blogsearch tools: Stonyfield.com/weblog: 67 post links to in Technorati 102 in Blogpulse 70 in Feedster Blog.btigroup.com: 17 post links in Technorati 11 in Blogpulse 22 in Feedster

Who is writing about you? How Do you weight them? Technorati:

Who is linking to you? Blogpulse:

Finding Influencers Read posts, comments and follow conversations Find communities Lisa Poulson and her interns Looks for link #’s to those who link to you High numbers are indications of popularity (not authority) Look for key word and tag references to photos, blog posts, urls and to you…

In the end… You must read the posts, look at photos, del.icio.us links and tags If people can find it online, you must be concerned about it, no matter the perceived influence But there is hope for better metrics!

Contact Info: Mary Hodder Blog: napsterization