Are you wondering how to measure blog success? There’s definitely more than one way to do so. Depending on your business and your goals, these suggestions may or may not be relevant to your objectives. As part of our social media training, these are the ways we advise our students to measure their blog success.

• Traffic – Most bloggers agree that, no matter what, the more traffic the blog receives, the more successful the blog. It’s helpful to keep track and analyze how many visitors, length of their visit, page views, etc.
• Comments – Receiving blog comments are another good way to measure blog success, but comments are not always indicative of how many visitors you’re attracting to your blog. However, comments are a good sign of engagement with your audience. It’s helpful to evaluate if the comments are insightful, genuine, and engaging. Or are they just spammers or complainers? Don’t delete complaining or negative comments. Use them as a chance to turn lemons into lemonade.
• RSS Subscribers – RSS subscribers are readers who have chosen to receive your blog updates through email or a feed that shows up in their chosen reader. It shows readers want to keep up with your blog regularly, and this is generally a good sign of success!
• Incoming links and trackbacks – The more other blogs and websites link to your blog, the better. This will generate more traffic and more buzz to your site. The more links, the better engagement and sharing your blog is receiving.
• Search Ranking – Have you optimized your blog? The better search engine optimization you do for each blog post, the more likely your posts are to show up in search engine results. The more your blog shows up in search engine results...the more traffic you’ll receive to your blog. And hopefully this will be relevant traffic that is specific to your target audience.
• Awards and top lists – Have you started showing up on top 10 lists or received any blogging awards? This increases your name recognition and standing in your industry—and this is definitely the sign of a successful blog. If your goal was to become a thought leader in your industry, and you receive an award along those lines...well, then, you’re definitely accomplishing what you set out to do.
• Leads – You should have a call to action on your blog, whether it’s an email address, a phone number or a form you have the reader fill out, and if you’re receiving leads from this call to action specifically...then that’s a huge sign of success.

Measuring your blog’s success all depends on what you originally wanted to achieve through the blog. What were your initial goals? Did you want to establish your blog as a thought leader in your industry? Or perhaps you really wanted to use it to develop networking in your business field? Or maybe your primary intention was to use your blog as a launch pad for a new service or product? Do you consider your business blog to be a marketing tool or a customer service avenue…or both? 

Analyze and evaluate all the suggestions above to get a complete picture of your blog’s success, and if you need help improving your blog, check out Splash Media U’s online resources for small business owners and social media managers.