A framework and recommended "starter tool kit" for measuring and understanding the success of your blog.

1. Key Success Metrics
Participation (outside in) + Conversation (inside out)
Press
Traffic
Time Spent Social Media
Comments
Comments
Conversation
Participation
Search
Subscriptions
Optimization
Tags &
Distribution
Bookmarks

2. Measurement Toolkit: Participation
• A statistical analysis package that measures baseline
participation metrics for traffic and time spent.
Shown: Google Analytics (free); Alternate: SiteMeter (free), WebTrends (paid)

3. Measurement Toolkit: Participation
• Feedburner provides
detailed subscription
data for both RSS and
email subscribers.
• Distributable assets
(widgets, social
applications,
embeddable
content, etc) require
the use of your
technology providers’
proprietary
measurement tools.

4. Measurement Toolkit: Comments
• Tracked in your
blogging software’s
admin interface.
• Requires human
analysis to measure
volume, trends and
sentiment – all
necessary qualitative
measures that
prompt your
response activities.
• Response levels and sentiment are a key input for
changes to your content strategy.
Shown: Typepad admin, features/functionality will vary by platform.

5. Measurement Toolkit: Conversation
• Google search results indicate how well your blog
content indexes in the organic results.
– Track increases in hit volume and assess your prominence in
the first 2-3 pages of results.

6. Measurement Toolkit: Conversation
• Register your blog with Technorati and your blog’s
authority and influence, as well as the volume,
frequency, recency and sentiment of blog coverage.

7. Measurement Toolkit: Conversation
• Monitor social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us to
gauge how often consumers tag blog content, which
content is most popular and what folksonomy tags
are most widely used to save your content.