Open Discussion: What are You Measuring?

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Michael Martine • 68 Comments

They say that what gets measured, gets improved. So what are you measuring? Because if you’re not measuring, you’re not paying attention to the forces that affect your traffic, influence, and income. And how can you expect to succeed in marketing your business if you’re not doing that?

Here’s where you come in: what are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and what do you do with the information? Tell us in the comments!

Bonus question: what do you think you should be measuring? And if you’re not, why not?

Filed Under: Blogging

http://rawfoodswitch.com Nathalie Lussier

I measure subscribers, followers, sales, alexa rankings, facebook fans, and most importantly… conversations! I love having conversations and really engaging with people. A day where I get lots of emails or twitter messages or facebook posts is a good day.
- remarkablogger
  
  Nathalie, thanks for sharing. How do you know the conversations result in moving the other needles?
  - http://rawfoodswitch.com Nathalie Lussier
    
    It's not exactly a one to one, especially because it can take time for people to get to know you or need your product or service. But I have seen times where twitter conversations have turned into sales/sign ups/etc. So it's less “trackable” but definitely not something to be ignored.
    - remarkablogger
      
      Nathalie, thanks for the reply. It's great activity on twitter gets leads or sales, isn't it? I love that.
http://twitter.com/tommy_landry Tommy Landry

So many things, traffic, subscribers, conversions, keyword strength, the list goes on.
- remarkablogger
  
  Thanks, Tommy. What do mean by keyword “strength,” and how does measuring that affect your decisions?
http://www.gillianpritchett.com/ Gillian

It's not Thursday again ! Times flies – I think I should be measuring time !
Seriously – I check where people come from – in terms of region of the world and what word(s) they were searching for.
- remarkablogger
  
  It sneaked up on ya, didn't it? Why do you find it so important to know what part of the world people come from? What do you do based on that information?
http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

As you know, I'm measuring the amount of people willing to invest in themselves and in the information they consume.

Outside of that, and probably more practical for the purposes of this discussion, I'm measuring loyalty, such as repeat comments and RT's, progress, and of course…the bottom line.
- remarkablogger
  
  It will be interesting how loyalty connects to your bottom line. I know you use Disqus, (as I do) which makes it easy to measure commenting, but what are you using to measure twitter data? I've recently started using HootSuite and PostRank.
  - http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen
    
    I check clickthroughs with bit.ly, but honestly I don't measure Twitter as much as I used to. Now I can kind of feel my way through it without having to look at the numbers. Of course, I use custom searches and keep an eye on them, but time on site, visitor loyalty (Google Analytics), new vs returning visitors, etc are all metrics that I keep a much closer eye on.
    - remarkablogger
      
      Awesome, thanks for the reply. I'm actually measuring Twitter more now, whereas before I wasn't hardly measuring anything from it all except referral traffic to the blog.
David Hodgson

There are three groups you should be interested in, new visitors, regular visitors, and people who have your blog set to their homepage. If you have a number of people who are overly regular visitors to your blog, you need to find some way at all the warning them by giving them some gold membership extra site, so they do not pollute your data. Obviously then you sort by region or customers or sane and insane
- remarkablogger
  
  Interesting… not sure what to make of what you're saying. I'm having a hard time following your logic. Why are loyal visitors polluting your data? Why the remark about sanity? Was that a joke?
http://www.notaproblog.com Jordan Cooper

There is only one thing I definitively measure over all others: my passion.

Some days I feel like working my face off. Some days not so much so. But I've always found that when my passion is at it's peak, success happens.

The more passion you bring to the table, all the other metrics end up falling into place accordingly.
- remarkablogger
  
  I would love to hear how you “definitively” measure passion.
  
  And how do you know the “other metrics” are falling into place if you're not measuring them? If I'm misunderstanding you, let me know, but it seems you're saying you don't measure these other things, which by their nature should easily be more “definitive” than passion. I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm trying to understand how you know what you're saying is really the case.
  - http://www.notaproblog.com Jordan Cooper
    
    Michael, feel free to be an ass to me anytime you'd like!
    
    I'm just saying that fawning & fretting over numbers too much doesn't actually add any benefit if you're not actually passionate in succeeding.
    
    Look at how many people clutch tightly onto RSS readers, e-mail list subscribers, Alexa rank, Twitter replies, etc. but does increasing these numbers actually lead to success?
    
    Sure, for those that are passionate at what they do, it will optimize their efforts much better. But without the driving force to succeed at what they do (no matter what it is or how small the niche) the numbers alone won't bring it.
    
    Imagine that you're in the dark & don't have access to any statistics about your blog. Are you telling me that now you won't succeed without these measuring sticks?
    
    Michael, I know you put 120% passion into your work. So don't you think you can go without analyzing metrics for a full year – check them then and see the fruits of your labor were indeed positive in those stat numbers?
    - remarkablogger
      
      Thanks, Jordan, I wasn't sure how literal to take what you were saying.
      Thanks for making such great points!
      
      You could drive your car without any gauges, too, but if you wanted to
      achieve a certain constant speed, know when to change your oil, know when
      you needed to add gas, or achieve a certain gas mileage, you would run into
      problems. Some people do have a passion for cars, but most of us care more
      about where they can take us. Make sense?
      
      I agree that getting obsessive about certain numbers is not healthy,
      especially when the time taken up with that could have been spent on doing
      something that actually makes the important numbers jump. And the reason why
      we're concerned with making certain numbers jump is because it directly
      leads to more money in the bank. I focus here on business owners who are
      using a blog to market their products and services, so at the end of the day
      it's about leads or sales.
christinelivingston

On a monthly basis I'm measuring visits, page views, bounce rate, new visits, subscribers and Alexa ranking. Also, posts per week and personal interactions per week (coaching sessions, comments, tweets, emails, phone conversations.)

What should I be measuring? Need to think about that one…..
- remarkablogger
  
  Thanks for sharing, Christine. You could also be measuring Twitter followers and retweets, your position in search engine results for your top keywords, and sales which converted specifically due to what you're doing on your blog or on twitter.
  - christinelivingston
    
    Good points. A few readers have said they'd like to see a retweet button on my posts. How do I add this – and in a way that counts the retweets?
    - http://www.reachourdreams.com/ Jen
      
      Hey Christine, I think it is the diggdigg plugin you need.
    - remarkablogger
      
      Tweetmeme is the most popular one.
http://wahmbizbuilder.com/ Melinda | SuperWAHM

I have an excel spreadsheet that I record stats in. I measure unique visitors, average daily visitors, newsletter subscribers – totals, new and unsubscribes plus the conversion rate, RSS, Alexa page rank, free downloads, and products sold.

Normally I only record my stats on the 1st of the month, but if I've got a promotion or guest post up then I check them every day to see where they've come from and the effect.
- remarkablogger
  
  Wow, Excel spreadsheets, huh? That's some power analyzing right there. So are you going month to month in this spreadsheet, then?
  - http://wahmbizbuilder.com/ Melinda | SuperWAHM
    
    I enter the figures on the first of the month and the figures then link to graphs so I can see increases and decreases easily. I keep spreadsheets for each year, running Jan to Dec.
    - remarkablogger
      
      Awesome, Melinda, thanks so much for the clarification!
jlctaggart

Hey Michael.

I found your recent five-part mod course on social media excellent. Okay, I'll throw a bit of curve ball at you and your followers. I've been getting a tad frustrated at trying to boost my subscribers. I should note that my blog, which is based on WordPress, is also manually transferred to four other blogs. This sucks, because I need metrics but the other hosts have yet to introduce this. I write on leadership so I try to orient my post transfers to similar sites.

But I had a reawakening last night. I'm almost finished reading Mitch Joel's “Six Pixels of Separation,” which has been well received. I'll share one part of Joel's book which hammered home why I began blogging in May 2009. Joel states on building a 3D personal brand:

1) Give abundantly: “The best way to build a personal brand is to give your knowledge away.” He then talks about building client relationships.

2) Help others: When you meet people at events or in your community, listen to their needs. “Stay in the loop.”

3) Build relationships: Joel talks about the importance of “conversation” in the “digital revolution.” But it's about creating real relationships.

So Micheal, why did Joel's advice hit me between the eyes? Because I've been doing this for 30 years. Yeah, I'm an old mid fifties old fart. But whether you're dealing with bits and bytes or looking into someone's eyes, it's about creating lasting relationships and adding VALUE to the conversation.

Sorry for the tangent, but wanted to share this.

BTW: My wife and I love Montpelier. Beautiful capital…J
- http://www.youtubeline.com youtubeline
  
  nice comment
- remarkablogger
  
  I'm concerned you're duplicating your content to other blogs. Is this a syndication deal? If so, it should be easily automated via RSS. And you should make sure on these other blogs there are links back to your “home base” blog in each post.
  
  That way, even if you have no access to analytics on these other sites (or they don't even use any), you can at least track referrals to your home base blog from these other blogs. If you're getting traffic from them, then it's worthwhile to continue what you're doing.
  
  But if you're not getting traffic from them, then you'd have to question why do you bother? I'm all for helping others, but I do it in a way I think of as “enlightened self-interest.” If you don't get traffic, hopefully there are other benefits to the relationship. Otherwise, your energy, time, and search rank are getting sucked away by parasites.
  
  One way to use your analytics is to see who's driving traffic to you so that you know who to strengthen your relationships with. That's the connection between analytics and relationships.
  - jlctaggart
    
    Thanks Micheal for your reply. No, it's nothing as elaborate as a syndication (I could only wish). In effect, one of the sites (Open Salon) received my posts automatically, then they had a software glitch last fall. Their customer service sucks, and said they're working on it. But it only takes me 30 seconds to add my post. The other sites are niche-specific leadership websites that do not yet have automatic feeds.
    
    My aim is to share, get my name out there, etc.
    
    Of interest, I did a guest post for a virtual friend in Nevada. My guest post was picked up by Smart Brief and generated 2,400 visits and over 100 comments. However, my WordPress blog had an increase but meager. So in reply to the question you pose in your five mod course about content, I write great content. My challenge is getting noticed. It's ironical that it was via a guest post that I generated a lot of attention.
    
    But in the end, I'm just not nailing it. And if you want to say, “I suck,” then if the shoe fits…
    
    Thanks again for taking the time to write…Jim
    - remarkablogger
      
      Jim, guest posts are a terrific way to get traffic and get your name out
      there. That's actually the norm. Not ironic at all.
http://thailandlandofsmiles.com/ Talen

I measure traffic daily, weekly and monthly. I measure where the traffic is coming from and where they are going when they leave.
- remarkablogger
  
  Thanks, Talen. I would advice you to keep an eye on search keywords too, so you know how people are finding your site.
http://cindyking.biz/ Cindy King

Hi Michael, Of course I keep my eye on lots of the things mentioned here. But right now the number I'm totally focused on building right now is my private list of potential leads I find through all of my social media networking.

And I've also got my eye open to make sure everyone merits to be on this list. I could probably list them all by heart if I lost all my data and there are several hundred of them.

I guess all of the other numbers I track lead up to this one anyways.
- remarkablogger
  
  Cindy, thanks for sharing that great idea with everyone. What do you keep this list in? Excel? Highrise? Outlook? Inquiring minds want to know.
http://www.slymarketing.com Jens P. Berget

I'm only measuring two things.

1) Traffic: how many unique visitors I have
2) Referral sites: how my visitors are ending up at my blog

But I understand that I probably should be measuring a lot more
- remarkablogger
  
  Jens, if you're running a business, then there are two more metrics to watch: Email list sign-ups and sales conversions. Because without these last two, the first two don't matter: bigger numbers towards what purpose?
http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

Wow, awesome comments so far, mate, and great to see folks measuring their success.

I guess ways that I measure (and how they interconnect) are:

* Influence of post. PostRank is a great tool for this, and helps guide me on follow-up posts and answering more questions.
* New commenters. I keep a database of all commenters and know when there are new ones. Always a good sign that your blog is growing.
* Technorati influence. My blog is now in the Top 100 Small Business blogs on Technorati, so again good sign of growth.
* Social outreach. Shares with friends, bookmarks, re-blogs, quoted elsewhere.
* Downloads of ebooks.
* Subscriptions. How many new and posts that result in unsubscribes.
* Approaches bu companies and advertisers to promote their product (I don't, but always a good measurement of influence and growth).

These are just some of the methods and measurements I look for. I'll be sure to check out the comments for more.

Cheers Michael, great conversation starter.
- remarkablogger
  
  Thanks, Danny. I'm glad you mentioned a few things here that haven't come up, yet: Measuring new commenters, Technorati influence, ebook downloads, and being approached.
  
  I'm sure this will get some people thinkin'.
http://tilsiter.co.uk/andrewtilsiter Andrew Tilsiter

I like to analyze my blog's most prominent keywords and confront those to the search keywords that bring me the most traffic…
- remarkablogger
  
  Thanks, Andrew. You have to constantly keep an eye on things to make sure your blog is ranking for keywords you want it to, and not other keywords by accident.
http://www.theskooloflife.com/ Srinivas Rao

As somebody who came from a market research background, I used to be kind of nuts about measuring stats. But as I've read books like Tribes and Linchpin I started to really question quantifying it. The thing that I started to really focus on is quality and community. These include

1) How often do the same people come back to my blog?
2) How much do I engage with a certain group of people on a regular basis
3) How do I grow that group of people to reach 1000 true fans?

Traffic, while nice stopped being important to me. I look more at time spent on my site and the referral source. If the time spent is significantly higher when it comes from a certain referral source, I'll even contact the owner of the blog about writing a guest post on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. So, at this point more than anything my focus is on community.
- remarkablogger
  
  Srinivas, I like your approach and especially your response to high referrals and participation. That's exactly what I advocate from knowing one's analytics.
  
  Question for you: where does conversion come into the picture? You want that group of people you engage with, your “thousand true fans” to be buyers, not freeloaders, yes?
  - http://www.theskooloflife.com/ Srinivas Rao
    
    Hey Michael,
    
    That's an interesting question because as you know Sid Savara and I are working on the launch of BlogcastFM and we've been giving alot of thought to how we convert. The other day I heard Seth Godin's interview with Untemplater and when he said that people will pay for two things “access to people and access to information faster than they can get it anywhere else”. So, I'm trying to incorporate that idea into how we start to think about conversion. In other words, I don't quite know .
    - remarkablogger
      
      Srinivas, thanks for your reply. At least you're thinking about it. That
      puts you a step ahead of most people.
- remarkablogger
  
  Awesome, thanks so much for the clarification!
http://extacypillsonline.com/ Mark

Well i measure all the stats i can get at my blog.
markpmsg

Michael — we measure, first and foremost, meetings generated from marketing activities. We then track the conversion of meetings to proposals and proposals to work. Those are the key drivers of our business.

We then also track the leading indicators — size and health of the house email list, clicks and opens of newsletters, subscriptions and unique visitors to the blog and web site.
- remarkablogger
  
  I was hoping someone would mention email list metrics, like deliverablilty, opens, and clicks. One thing I make sure to keep an eye on is open rates and click-through rates.
remarkablogger

Thanks, Danny. I'm glad you mentioned a few things here that haven't come up, yet: Measuring new commenters, Technorati influence, ebook downloads, and being approached.

I'm sure this will get some people thinkin'.
remarkablogger

Thanks, Andrew. You have to constantly keep an eye on things to make sure your blog is ranking for keywords you want it to, and not other keywords by accident.
remarkablogger

Thanks, Andrew. You have to constantly keep an eye on things to make sure your blog is ranking for keywords you want it to, and not other keywords by accident.
remarkablogger

Srinivas, I like your approach and especially your response to high referrals and participation. That's exactly what I advocate from knowing one's analytics.

Question for you: where does conversion come into the picture? You want that group of people you engage with, your “thousand true fans” to be buyers, not freeloaders, yes?
remarkablogger

Srinivas, I like your approach and especially your response to high referrals and participation. That's exactly what I advocate from knowing one's analytics.

Question for you: where does conversion come into the picture? You want that group of people you engage with, your “thousand true fans” to be buyers, not freeloaders, yes?
remarkablogger

Srinivas, I like your approach and especially your response to high referrals and participation. That's exactly what I advocate from knowing one's analytics.

Question for you: where does conversion come into the picture? You want that group of people you engage with, your “thousand true fans” to be buyers, not freeloaders, yes?
remarkablogger

I was hoping someone would mention email list metrics, like deliverablilty, opens, and clicks. One thing I make sure to keep an eye on is open rates and click-through rates.
remarkablogger

I was hoping someone would mention email list metrics, like deliverablilty, opens, and clicks. One thing I make sure to keep an eye on is open rates and click-through rates.
remarkablogger

I was hoping someone would mention email list metrics, like deliverablilty, opens, and clicks. One thing I make sure to keep an eye on is open rates and click-through rates.
remarkablogger

I was hoping someone would mention email list metrics, like deliverablilty, opens, and clicks. One thing I make sure to keep an eye on is open rates and click-through rates.
furnitureireland

At the minute we are working on a new business and are taking extra time to monitor and measure ranking as well as daily traffic! It a tough game when you launch into a competitive market – persistance will pervale!
furnitureireland

At the minute we are working on a new business and are taking extra time to monitor and measure ranking as well as daily traffic! It a tough game when you launch into a competitive market – persistance will pervale!
pjnsports

I use google analytics which is great. I can see visitors, unique visitors, region source e.g from google, refering site direct url entry etc.
http://stopdoingnothing.com Patrick Allmond

Everything. And I know that seems like a cop out. Right now on a new project I am doing macro measuring. I won't get into micromeasure until each of the macros have a significant number to them.
Source: Web Traffic
Macro: Website Visitors and Page Hits
Micro: Where they are coming from, how long they stay, what is their click path, which country and state are they from, are they new or returning, what type of browser do they have, how many different pages they visit,

Source: Email Marketing
Macro: Email subscribers
Micro: Unsubscribers, deliverability errors, How many times each person opens the mail, on what links do they clink,

Source: Microdiscussions (twitter, etc)
Macro: Number of followers
Micro: I do a little research into churn rate and how many people click on links. But I really do not go into metrics too deep into anything related to twitter. There is so much that cannot be measured, too many measurements can be skewed, and so many of typical measurement numbers just don't mean anything (i.e. Klout) that I don't bother. It is and always will be hard to measure what is going in conversations.
- remarkablogger
  
  Patrick, thanks for adding to the discussion. “Everything” is better than
  nothing! With regard to twitter, I find it's worth measuring clicks on links
  and retweets because those are the most direct measure of your influence
  there.
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http://www.aceaffiliates.com/ Tim Holmes

i measure and also look for recommendations and reviews!
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