Shel Israel has put it eloquently in his post about Charlene Li and her attempt to measure blogging’s return on investment.  This is probably one of the most often asked questions when discussing business blogging.  Many executives today are always wanting to quantify blogs and stack them neatly in the corner and count them with the rest of the widgets to be indexed and categorized and their value put on the bottom line to report in the year end accounting.It’s just not quite that simple. 

Sure we can quantify traffic numbers through the use of site tracking applications, but how can you measure the return you get from communicating your company message to potential customers?  You could ask them how they heard about your service through surveys and questionnaires but is that really accurate?  Charlene discusses this:

One of the hardest things to do with blogs is to quantify the benefits, mainly because there’s a blog for almost everything under the sun. For example, you cant compare the ROI of Direct2Dell.com to Microsoft’s Jobsblog as they have completely different goals. Hence, measuring just traffic to a blog or the number of comments on a post means little unless the traffic or the comments are linked to value creation. This gets at the task of measuring intangibles – what does it mean for an additional visitor to come to the blog or contribute a comment?

Charlene breaks down blogging’s ROI into three different categories;

• Benefits;
• Costs; and
• Risks.

As I began to think of the benefits, costs and risks, I was able to make my own mental list of things that companies should consider in the measurement of success of a blog and its return on investment.

These of course are basic categories but for the most part it is a good model to get started. She raises some good points to consider in these areas, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of her study.  If you have any metrics you can provide to her for her study she is asking for feedback and a discussion.

Tags: Shel Israel, Charlene Li, ROI, Blog Investment, Corporate Blogging, Blog Risk, Blog Benefits, Blog Costs