Day: May 11, 2004

Measuring Blog Relations…

Kathy E. Gill has penned an interesting research paper entitled “How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?” (PDF). As the title suggests it looks at how we might measure the reach and influence of individual blogs.

One of the problems I have with much of the current writing on blog measurement is that it treats blogs in the same manner as the PR industry views journalism. I think that’s a little shortsighted.

While influential blogs are normally widely read, it’s not purely a question of the pure “circulation” or the volume of links. 

Not only does this approach ignore many smaller, yet possibly more effective blogs but it does nothing to help us understand the potential of using weblogs as a means of communicating with your audience(s), which can often be just as valuable.

The Internet provides us with a great opportunity to measure the performance of most marketing activities.  This measurement should be applied to blog relations.

Research the most relevant blogs – are there blogs focused on your industry? What are your customers and partners reading?

Understand the blogger’s agenda – even the most independent blogger has opinions

Respect the blogger – Bloggers don’t necessarily play by the well established PR-Media rule book.  You should be very careful before you pitch.  Understand the blogger’s agenda and modus operandi. Don’t spam them.

Measure, measure, measure – when you work with a blogger and they post a story on your firm, track the number of referrals that a post on a particular blog provides to your website.

Roll your own – would a blog be a useful communications tool for your own business? Do you have views on your industry? Can you commit the time required?

Review – once your blog relations program is underway, review it.  Find out what worked and what didn’t.. and why.

Blog relations can yield significant results. A couple of years ago we pitched four bloggers on a free utility we were providing.  We did this prior to a press release on the utility and we measured the response to the bloggers’ posts as best we could.

The result was that we got a great understanding of the respective influence of the various blogs.  We also managed to get over a million people to use the free utility.  In addition, the blog posts got the utility published in mainstream media such as the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News as well as a large number of trade magazines.  Blog Relations can work if you take a well planned approach to target blogs that are relevant to your business. 

Footnote:

The original link to Kathy E. Gill’s research is from Steve Rubel.

Mike Manuel also has some thoughts on blog measurement.

The collision of blogging and the media (Boston Globe)

Today’s Boston Globe takes a look at the collision of blogs and the traditional media. the piece is focused on the political side of the house.

“Their (bloggers) distance from professional media, in part, is what gives blogs their identity. Bloggers’ voices are often more conversational, and profane, than newspaper or magazine fare. And while blogs have been known to amplify little-noticed news events, such as Senator Trent Lott’s 2002 praise of his colleague Strom Thurmond, blog postings don’t always hew to old-school standards of sourcing and fact-checking. There’s usually no editing at all, which many bloggers take as a point of pride.”

 

The hidden danger of blogs

There’s a very amusing article in the UK Times on the potential danger of embarrasment for babies born to parents who blog.

“So put yourself in the place of Jake, 28 days old today, whose mother, Nicola, has been keeping a diary of his birth on www.babythoughts.co.uk. Imagine a future employer or girlfriend reading the entry for Monday, April 12: ‘Ew. Jake just peed on my arm! It�s like a fountain that never ends. How can such a tiny baby have such a big bladder?’�