This is the eighth article in the series Blogging 101 series.
After a few months of writing articles and networking through social media and commenting, it will be interesting to see what you started with and where you have come. To be able to know how far we have come, we will need to use some specific tools that allow us to measure our success. Below is a list of five things to help you produce the best results when measuring your data.
- Measure Only What Your Blogging Strategy Needs. We took the time to put together our blogging strategy, so lets not reinvent the wheel. We assume that you followed the guidelines and the goals are crystal clear and measurable, so now we just need to identify what it is that could be used.
- Patience, Young Padawan. As Yoda says, we must have patience with this website. Unless you have celebrity friends, your site is not going to be an overnight hit. It may actually take a year or two before you regularly get a hundred or two hundred visitors to your site everyday, and that is typical. We need to prepare for a marathon and not treat blogging like a sprint.
- Failure Gets Us Closer To The Target. If this is truly your first website, the strategy that you put together most likely was not accurate, though you most likely tried to make it as realistic as possbile. Some of the goals may have been too easy and others too hard. Either situation allows us to critique ourselves after a few months, rework the blog strategy, and strive to better the blog. Then, after another few months, hopefully we are a little better off. Again, we can critique those new goals, rework the blog strategy, and strive for success again. Press on and work for better targets to shoot for.
- Google Analytics For Raw Data. If part of your measurement was to have so many viewers, page views, or other blogging statistics, I would highly encourage that you sign up for Google Analytics. This tool is a data mine for knowing who has been to your site, what posts are a success, and how many people visit a day. (Need help setting it up? Contact us for free assistance)
- Do Not Rely On Quantity, But Quality. In the beginning of blogging, we have idealizations of becoming a blogging superstar and hope for a hundred thousand views in just a year’s time, but I would encourage you in your first year to instead look for quality views that result in commenting, rather than simply visiting your website. Remember that 20 loyal fans will continue to return, but 100 visitors may not. In the long run, shoot for the fans of your blog.
What does success look like for your blog and how are you going to know you have reached it or not?
[…] Measuring Success […]