How do you measure the return on blogging? Companies who are already blogging have some interesting insights.
Blogging is clearly very fashionable and those companies who adopt blogging can gain first mover advantage and position themselves as more progressive. There are reports from companies who are blogging who say that they want to be seen as more collaborative and transparent. They want to get away from the days when they issued a carefully packaged message and then just drew up the drawbridge not wishing to enter into any conversations.
IBM is a major company which has embraced blogging in a positive way and on a large scale. With so many experts in different areas they see joining conversations in blogging communities as a major opportunity to gain influence and extend the reach of the IBM brand.
You can measure blogs in terms of how many visitors they are getting and in terms of how many people are linking to them. After that it is down to the relationships you build through the conversations and communities you join. You can also learn lessons and get valuable feedback. Furthermore, blog posts are favoured by search engines. Blogs have good Google juice and will help raise your online profiles. Blogs are also an excellent way to provide platforms for fans of your brand and for customer evangelists. Vespa motorscooters and Starbucks have customers who blog on their behalf, spreading positive messages across the networks of the web. Vespa worked with its PR agency to set up its fan blogs. The bloggers get compensated with scooters which are loaned to them. You can ignore fan bloggers, try to shut them down, or encourage and work with them.
