ROI of blogging : Framework to measure
Charlene Li, a principal analyst with Forrester Reasearch, and her colleague, Chloe Stromberg, have created a framework for measuring the ROI on blogging. Though just in the process of interviewing medium- and large-sized companies, the framework established provides some ROI measurement guidelines for you.
They’ve broken down measuring the ROI of blogs into three components: 1) Benefits; 2) Costs; and 3) Risks.
Here’s the grid for measuring the benefits.
| Benefit | Appropriate Measurement |
| Consumer self-education | Higher conversion rate for blog visitors |
| Greater visibility in search results | Increased traffic from search to blog |
| Lower the cost of public relations | Generate the same level of awareness as PR |
| Reach an enthusiast community | Lower cost communication tool |
| Address criticisms on other blogs/news stories | Measure the slow down of bad news spreading |
| More responsive to consumer concerns | Track customer satisfaction and retention |
| Improve employee innovation and productivity | Track employee satisfaction and retention |
| Improved stock price with greater visibility into the organization | Connect improved investor sentiment to blog readership |
Measuring costs is pretty straight forward. Charlene mentions platform costs, training, policy creation, and employee time for publishing, maintaining, and troubleshooting.
Charlene believes the risks of a corporate blog can overshadow the benefits. She offers a sound approach in evaluating the risks.
One best practice I have seen is when the senior executive asked the blog champion to come back with a list of the top five things that can go wrong – and to also include the training and policies he would need to have in place to mitigate that risk.
Charlene shares a formula for calculating the risk and the ROI into hard numbers. I don’t see the need for a number, nor do I believe a number can be used to calculate the ROI of blogs.
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