Scoble on blog metrics

By Charlene Li

Robert Scoble was kind enough to respond to my query on blog metrics examples -- here's the excerpt from his post:

Here's some ways I'm measuring it:

1) How many inbound links there are. That shows how many people find you interesting enough to link to. Use Technorati.

2) How much raw traffic each site is sending. For instance, when Joel Spolsky linked to me he sent me about 12,000 visitors off of one link. Slashdot usually sends 15,000 to 100,000, depending on the sensationalism of the headline. Mainstream press? When Dave Winer was linked to by an article on MSN's home page he got 200,000 visitors from one link.

3) Anecdotal influence measures. For that you have to go to conferences and talk to people. Collect business cards. Etc.

I'm interested in how other people are measuring their ROI. You do all notice that I'm still doing this as a hobby on my own time, right? It's the fun things that change the world.

Which raises a darn good question -- if a company is going to sanction (or at least ignore the productivity impact) of someone blogging, there has to be a clear, measurable benefit to the company. An official blog hopefully brings the company better returns in the form of increased sales and lower customer service costs. And in the case of tolerating employee blogs, appropriate metrics may be employee satisfaction and retention.

Comments

[kevin powers]

Hi Charlene,
I was just curious if you've come across any information or a resource that allows you to see how many folks monitor your's (or anyone else's) blog via RSS? Arguably, knowing how many subscribers you have would be a great metric, beyond just seeing who is linking to your site. Any thoughts would be great!
Thanks!
Kevin

[kevin powers]

Hi Charlene,
I was just curious if you've come across any information or a resource that allows you to see how many folks monitor your's (or anyone else's) blog via RSS? Arguably, knowing how many subscribers you have would be a great metric, beyond just seeing who is linking to your site. Any thoughts would be great!
Thanks!
Kevin

[Anita Campbell]

For measuring inbound links, I also use a little known feature in Bloglines called the "What's Hot" or Citations. http://www.bloglines.com/citations

I find it to be more reliable than Technorati. And it is quick as a flash, whereas Technorati frequently times out. And the Bloglines version has picked up links that Technorati has missed for days on end.

The link count is considerably different from what's shown in Technorati. I don't know if it's because Bloglines started later and thus doesn't show older links. The recent links seem accurate.

I'm surprised that Bloglines doesn't do more to promote this feature.