Are you looking for cost-effective ways to drive sales from blogs…?

Three Blog-Related Considerations

When using blogs to enhance your marketing, assess the full impact of the blogs, because they aren’t a one-shot promotion yielding immediate returns.

• Blogs require an ongoing investment. This point needs to be stressed, since blogs may be created by nonmarketing staff where there isn’t a management-reporting relationship. To help spread the workload, have several people work on entries. Use an editorial calendar to ensure timely coverage of relevant topics and to help employees schedule their time.
• Blogs can take time to have an impact on purchasing and search optimization. Unlike other online marketing formats where results are realized quickly, like e-mail or search advertising, the sales impact of blogs happens over an extended period.
• Blogs require transparency. As with any form of social media, this is critical and needs to be thought through before the blog is made public. Among the areas to consider are how negative customer comments will be handled.

Five Blog Metrics to Track

As with any marketing strategy, using a blog to enhance the purchase process must be monitored to ensure you’re achieving your goals. Remember, these metrics may take time to yield returns.

• Traffic and/or revenue. As with any Web site addition, measure the number of visitors. Once the blog has reached a critical mass of content, utilize other forms of marketing to help extend its reach. Where appropriate, track sales back to blog entries. Remember, customers may use blogs in the pre- or post-purchase phases, and more complex methods of assessing their sales impact maybe required.
• Internal expenses. As with any marketing program, track the associated costs. Since blogs may be an addition to one or more employees’ workload, determining costs may be a little tricky.
• Customer input. Monitor blog comments as well as input from other customer touch points to determine how consumers feel about your products and your blog. Circulate these comments internally to show customer engagement and give management a better understanding of customers’ perspective.
• Search rankings. Track search rankings for important keywords covered in your blog. Bear in mind that it can take time for the search rankings to build.
• Branding. Use surveys to monitor consumer perception of your brand and company across a variety of brand-related metrics before and after you’ve started blogging to calculate change in mind share.

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