Some interesting discussion over the last couple of days about the necessity for a new kind of metric for measuring the effectiveness of blogs. Robert Scoble talks about the difference between getting page impressions (bad) and engagement (good):
There’s another stat out there called “engagement.†No one is measuring it that I know of.
What do I mean?
Well, I’ve compared notes with several bloggers and journalists and when the Register links to us we get almost no traffic. But they claim to have millions of readers. So, if millions of people are hanging out there but no one is willing to click a link, that means their audience has low engagement. The Register is among the lowest that I can see.
It kind of ties in with the recent talk about which are the most influential blogs, and the lists published by Edelman/Technorati of the top 50 bloggers in various countries, according to inbound links. The rankings have proven quite controversial, and I’ve seen a number of alternative lists (those three are for the UK alone). What exactly should we be measuring?
Traditional metrics, page views and users, would appear to do a poor job of showing either how engaged the audience is or how influential the writer is.
Inbound links seem to be a slightly better measure, though the flaws in that system are that (a) it only counts fellow bloggers, not general readers; (b) the most established bloggers, the A-list cartel, if you like, are accused of only ever linking to each other; © you might link to someone because you think they are wrong — it’s a good way to manufacture a story from thin air; and (d) it favours mainstream blogs over specialists.
Another stance you might take is that the number of comments on a blog give a good indication of influence and engagement. I quite like this. Obviously people are engaged if they get off their backsides and participate, aren’t they? Then I thought of a couple of problems. It would seem to favour controversialists over what the majority thinks, yet that doesn’t really mean they have a lot of influence; it just means they get people’s backs up. It is also affected by the style of writing — I would assume that someone who asks questions on their blog gets more responses than those who make statements.
Scoble continues, illustrating why a small, engaged audience might be a lot more important than a large, disengaged one. He also inadvertently suggests another possible measurement of this key property:
Yesterday Buzz Bruggeman CEO of Active Words, was driving me around and told the story of when he was in USA Today. He got 32 downloads. When he got linked to by my blog? Got about 400.
My audience was (and is) a lot smaller than USA Today, but the engagement of the blog audience got his attention.
That kind of suggests to me that there’s more fairness to the system than might initially appear. If response rates are higher when the call to action comes from an engaging blog, then ultimately, those engaging writers will be more successful.
Right. Can I have some money, please?
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Ian, this is a terrific discussion. Thanks for posting. I always saw the blogosphere in terms of islands of conversations and referral carries more weight than a casual click. I know my own habits have changed, if I have a moment to spare, I go look for the good blogs on any of our member sites. This isn’t a plug for TGB but I know the community and more often than not, I’ll find something I like. Maybe big portals are on the way out.
Hi Vern… plug away! Think you’re right about big portal sites, at least for people like you and I.
Hmmm. I discovered why Scoble might have it in for The Register. It rather unkindly called him a “globule” in their report about the Dell blog. Not very nice.
Ian… fantastic… it is just what we need in the debate.
You don’t get the money yet.
It is one thing to see response in one medium. But to be extra valuable, there is a need to see how values jump from one channel to the next. If the value is in a blog post, does it also have value in .… a podcast… newspaper.… supermarket shelf. Then the driver of the value is even greater.
As an aside. There can be no question about big portals. They can, as best, offer a version of scream marketing. A list that gets in the way of information or engagement is as bad as the pop-up and spam mail.
As RSS and similar technologies mature, the information people seek will go to them and that which they do not want will not be included — that is how this post came to me.
Who are the consumers of such measurements, be they through the Engagement method proffered in this article or through the old methods?
One can say for an advertiser accurate measurements are necessary so that a price for the advertisement can be negotiated. Conversely, for the owner of a site, accurate measurements are important to get ads and to plan for the future. If the owner has investors, these measurements indicate success or failure. For the advertiser, no matter what the measurement, if there were no sales from the ads, then the cost was too high.
Scoble writes that the Engagement method is a better measure but I don’t really see any precise definitions. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about it, but what from the presentation here, I am not convinced. One of the comments in Scoble’s article presented “Kirkpatrick’s Levels.” This, to me, has more merit but I doubt the measurability. Here are the levels according to Robert:
Kirkpatrick’s Level’s
1. Reactions (they heard you)
2. Learning (they understood and retained)
3. Transfer (they took in the information and can apply)
4. Results (they use the learning to achieve a goal)
Robert proposes a site equivalent as follows:
1. Click — A reader arrived (current metric)
2. Consume — A reader read the content
3. Understood — A reader understood the content and remembers
4. Applied — A reader applies the content in another venue
1 and 2 are measurable, but 3 and 4 are less. My comment here is demonstrative of 3 and 4 as I am understanding and remembering (3) and applying it another venue, i.e. your blog (4). But, how does that get measured for the first blog?
Some comments here and there try to equate “likeability” to “popularity”. But, I don’t think that really matters. Some of the most famous people are those you don’t like. Controversy generates traffic and traffic is what advertisers like.
So, I like the direction of Kirkpatrick’s measurements but I don’t know how they are feasible.
Wow. Great comments there. I hadn’t followed the comments thread on Robert’s post, but I clearly should do before I post further on this subject. The popular posts plug-in on my side-bar uses about 6 different measurements to judge what’s popular. I wonder if anyone can do that across the blogosphere? Will try to do an update on the discussion tomorrow.
Wednesday Search Industry Links 021407…
Here are those great 30 Traffic Generating Tips from Daniel’s blog:
1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. How do you know which blogs to keep track of in the first place.…..