Blogging has emerged as a mainstream for most online entrepreneurs to enter and explore the online world of possibilities. Although most blogs die within a short period of time, some thrive within the same short period as well. We, as bloggers, are constantly trying to measure our success by either checking the stats hour after hour or by analyzing the number of comments on each posts.
I have divided this topic into three posts as it seemed like it would be quite a long post and hey we all do have other things to do besides reading a blog. The first part is discussed below which shows you some ways to measure your blogging success within your blog. Since this post is the first one in the series it deals more with the basics. We will analyze more as we move along to the second and third posts of this series as we unveil the least used tools by bloggers.
Measuring Success From Within Your Blog
Subscriber Count
We all know the importance of subscribers. Each subscriber on your blog is conveying a message that says “ I like your content and I will be back for more.” Without a good subscriber base the growth of a blog is impossible. Mostly every aspect that I have tried to elaborate below will somehow depend on your subscriber base. Without a doubt, subscriber count is one of the most important tool or aid that helps you measure your blogging success.
Reader Participation
One of the most anticipated aspect of blogging is seeing your comment section overflowing with comments. Although at times comment count seems to be a bit over rated, it does show how successful you are as a blogger. High number of comments and reader participation shows your success as someone being able to engage readers and provide useful content.
Network and Affiliation
Most bloggers start with the notion that they will start making money immediately which is far from true. One of the best ways to measure your success as a blogger is to see how you have used your blog as a networking tool. Who is in your network? Have you been recognized by other bloggers and have had opportunity to talk to them via email and such? A successful blogger doesn’t focus on immediate earnings but long term relationship that will earn more in the future and open new opportunities. Your network portrays your success as a blogger.
Social Media Attention
Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and other social medias are of utmost importance if you want to gain new subscribers and build a growing blogging empire. Your success as blogger can depend quite a bit on how you are seen upon by social media crowd. The key to social media attention isn’t about hitting the front page every time, it’s about getting there once and retaining those user’s for the life of your blog. This again can be done by writing content that provide value and building anticipation as to what might be next. Ofcourse, your subscriber base helps as well in gaining attention from social media crowd. The more the merrier!
Link Backs
Your blogs success directly depends upon how you are seen by other bloggers as well. The statement “ Content is King “ holds true in this case. If you regularly make a habit of providing quality and valuable content to your readers, most probably other bloggers will grab the link and share it with their readers as well. This builds credibility and allows you to gain new readers. A huge, huge tool to build credibility and be on the road to success.
Reader Loyalty
One of the most important aspect of blogging is to see whether or not your readers are loyal. The key to building loyalty is creating anticipation. Every content on your blog needs to be something that sparks a light in the readers eyes and motivates them to do something. If you provide this, your readers will stick around. The key to reader loyalty again as usual is content. Build reader loyalty by creating anticipation and assuring them that every bit of their wait for another content is worth their time and wait.
I hope you find these “tools” engaging and useful in measuring the success of your blog and yourself as a blogger. Of course, there is much more ways to measure your blog growth but I find these some of the most important ways to see if you are growing and heading the right way. Your stats might show 20,000 visits each day but if you aren’t being able to convert them into readers or initiate conversation, I think stats just becomes a mere number without any value.
Part II of this series we will see how we can measure our blogging success by taking other blogs into consideration. Like I had written earlier, this post dealt more with the basics. The future posts on this series might give you some tools that you might not have yet added to your ” tools to measure blogging success” toolbox.
I agree with you on all of those points, but another big one for many people is money. Cash. Moola. People want some sort of physical return on their blog, and tracking and measuring this is important.
@ Max : This is the first post of the entire series. The future posts will certainly bring in the cash, moola or physical return as a way to measure blogging success.