27 Resources for Evaluating Blogging ROI

Why 27?

Because, after hours and hours of searching, and using Google Alerts for months, that is how many worthwhile articles I have found regarding Blogging ROI so far. I’m sure there are more out there, and I hope that if you know of an additional resource that you will provide that as a comment to this post.

Why have I looked so hard for resources about this topic? Because getting marketers and C-level executives to put corporate blogging on the front burner is so darn difficult.

I used to say that I believe that 95% of all companies can benefit from establishing and maintaining a corporate blog. I’ve toned that down a bit. Maybe it’s more like 85% to 90%.

The bottom line is that I know that blogging can have an incredible ROI (when done properly). Take your pick – more search engine traffic directly to the blog, more links to your overall Web presence, influencing customers and prospects by using a voice outside of the traditional marketing copy (i.e. connecting as humans), interacting with customers and handling negative feedback before it balloons, highlighting your expertise, etc.

I provided a few tangible examples of corporate blogging benefits in a previous post titled How to Convert a CEO Into a Blogging Evangelist.

A number of months ago I was involved in a project spearheaded by John Cass, where we set out to explore the calculation of blogging ROI. Unfortunately, the project lost some steam and I never published the data I had gathered comparing AdRants to AdFreak (and the data collection for that was mind-numbing!). It would be great to revisit that again someday, but the data I pulled together is already out of date, and the thought of re-researching the information pulls me to a complete halt.

So, as I scoured the Web for information on blogging (such as the blogging.org list of top blogs), case studies, success stories, and data regarding blogging ROI, I began to catalog some of the resources I found most helpful or most thought-provoking.

Here they are:

1) Charlene Li – The ROI Of Blogging (Forrester), January 24, 2007 This is THE report that everyone references.

2) Debbie Weil – author of book titled ROI of Business Blogging (Debbie has published other blogging books as well); Debbie’s blog

3) Damian Peterson – Calculate Your Blogging ROI, May 9, 2008

Selected Quote: Ever wanted to know what blog posts you write require the least effort and get the most comments? No? Well I did and I threw together a bit of SQL to help me identify the areas I can improve upon if I’m to become a serious challenger for the title of the Laziest Blogger Ever™ …

4) Derrick Sorles & Michael Snell – What is the ROI of Blogging, Web 2.0 Strategies and Social Media Marketing?, May 1, 2008

Selected Quote: Good search performance is money in the bank. If you can “own” your keywords, that’s a huge ROI, that isn’t quickly translated to dollars, but will, eventually.

5) Chris Garrett – The ROI of Business Blogging, March 24, 2008

Selected Quote: Business blogs are amongst the toughest type of sites to do well. I can’t name a single blogger who does the whole thing perfectly, but that’s fine because you don’t need to be perfect to gain most of the benefits.

Before taking on a tactic, any business needs to know what the Return on Investment (ROI) will be. There are three areas where blogs provide a return. Attraction, Stickiness and Conversion.

6) Tadeusz Szewczyk – ROI of Blogging and Social Media, March 11, 2008

Selected Quote: This is also one of the most important differences between a social media campaign and a social media strategy. In a campaign you measure $ while devising a strategy you set other, more important goals that are not measurable by such simple metrics like ROI but may pay out in manifold ways.

7) Sarah E. Goodwin – sxsw: 3.11.08 Future of Corporate Blogs, March 11, 2008

Selected Quote: Synergize. By building a community of respect, problems can be solved in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The refining of an idea by many can lead to the “magic” of social communication where 1+1=3.

8 ) Jeremiah Owyang – How Do I Measure ROI?, February 26, 2008

Selected Quote: Measuring “new” media isn’t as different as measuring “old” media, the trick is to figure out what your goal is first.

9) Andrew Chen – Is blogging worth it? What’s the ROI?, January 7, 2008

Selected Quote: These days, I mostly think of having a blog as the same as having a giant mailing list …

10) Marci Alboher – Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool , December 27, 2007

Selected Quote: Now, after about two years of blogging, Mr. Harlow said he was pleased with the results. He gets about 200 to 300 visits a day, he said. He has also become a source for publications looking for commentary on regulatory issues in the health care field and has even gained a few clients because of the blog. In addition, he has formed relationships with other legal bloggers (who call themselves blawgers) and consultants around the country.

(Marci’s article also provides a few nice, real-world examples of blogging success).

11) Danilo Bogdanovic – To The Agents Who Still Think That Blogs Are “Mumbo Jumbo”, We Say Thank You!, December 20, 2007

Selected Quote: We also use our blogs as a value-add and to build credibility with buyers, sellers, investors, banks, asset managers, colleagues, the media and other industry professionals on a daily basis.

12) Avinash Kaushik – Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success , November 19, 2007

Selected Quote: Measure: 1) Raw Author Contribution 2) Holistic Audience Growth 3) Conversation Rate 4) “Citations”? / “Ripple Index”? 5) Cost 6) Benefit / ROI.

13) Mack Collier – Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Media, November 13, 2007

Selected Quote: Regular readers and contributors to your blog are more likely to become evangelists for you. This of course lowers your marketing costs and makes your marketing more effective.

14) Geoff Livingston – The Measurement Meme, November 7, 2007

Selected Quote: Consider Dell’s 27 point decrease in negative blog posts, from 49 percent at the peak of Dell Hell to the current 22 percent. How much would they have had to spend on an ad campaign to achieve that same result? if that same result is even possible through advertising. Hundreds of millions of dollars for a brand that large.

15) Nina Burokas – What’s Your Blogging ROI?, August 29, 2007

Selected Quote: In The Corporate Blogging Book, [Debbie] Weil finesses the issue, arguing that although blogs exist in a digital realm often associated with metrics, the medium requires a different measure of value: ROB or return on blog. ROB is “all about connections, conversations, discovery, information, word-of-mouse, leverage, amplification and efficiencies.” Although she gives equal time to metrics, her point is simply that the true bottom line may not be search engine rankings, unique visitors and conversions but the fact that blogging solves a central problem: “the human desire – and business need – to connect.” Summary of blogging resources, and promo for upcoming article in Personal Branding.

16) Paul Gillin – Blogging’s ROI becoming clearer, March 7, 2007

Selected Quote: Businesses also use blogs to raise their visibility in specific markets. Simple traffic metrics are a good indication of success, but look also at what others are saying about your blog to get an indication of the “buzz” you’re generating. “Eyeballs are the wrong things to be counting,” Paine said. “Look at comments, trackbacks and links. If you’re getting a lot of those, then you’re making a difference.” It’s also a good idea to monitor chatter about your competitors for comparison.

17) Clive Thompson – The See-Through CEO, March 1, 2007

Selected Quote: When I posted a long entry on my blog describing this story in detail – normally a huge no-no in the competitive magazine business – interesting ideas came pouring across the transom. One reader, a software designer in France, told me he’d recently published the source code of his proprietary programs – and that doing so had increased sales. Clients were more likely to trust his wares, he found, when they knew what was going on beneath the hood.

18) Jeremiah Owyang – Reviewing Forrester’s “Calculating The ROI Of Blogging”, January 31, 2007

Selected Quote: Even if you don’t need to bring to the table an ROI metric, you should still be measuring. Also, this way, if you have a change in management’s opinions, you can apply the measurement over the cost, and spend some time to obtain an ROI metric.

19) Mario Sundar – Why is Corporate Blogging Important?, October 17, 2006

Selected Quote: From a business development perspective, I can tell you that blogging is one of the best sources to evangelize and thereby generate warm leads. Moreover, blogging will speak to your core target audience or prospective customer base more effectively since the readers of blogs are already actively researching for information (Pull vs. Push).

20) Rick Whittington – Calculating business blog ROI, July 31, 2006

Selected Quote: When I’ve pitched business blogs in the past, the client nearly always asked what the benefits of a blog were. The reasons to maintain a business blog include creating a sense of community with your customers, getting feedback from your customers, generating fresh content for your web site, building company credibility and improving search engine visibility, just to name a few.

21) Zane Safrit – Blogging’s ROI: 3 examples, June 19, 2006

Selected Quote: It’s always struck me as quirky that while the networking resources and opportunities at trade shows and conventions often justify the inordinate costs for these events…there still remains hand-wringing and worry and deep-deep-deep analysis of the ROI of blogging.

22) Stephen Turcotte – Blogging ROI Proof is for Pansies, April 2006

Selected Quote: …if a company wants a simple answer for how and why they can institutionalize blogging, they’re not going to get it waiting around for proof about how other companies are doing it. Lazy marketing directors and their CEOs want to take their budget and spend it on a guaranteed return. I’m a lazy CEO too. I’d love to spend short money on big return. Show me something other than blogging that can help me get better search engine rankings and links, and boost sales, improve thought leadership, extend traditional PR and generate press coverage, strengthen relationship with my customers and help me build better products.

23) James Governor – Rethinking ROI for the the blog generation: Return on “I”, Dennis, Hugh, Kathy and You, April 5, 2006

Selected Quote: Ask not what a blog can do for your corporate bottom line, but what it can do for you. If it scales you, and you’re already effective, then its also scaling business effectiveness.

24) Jason Stamper – The ROI of blogging, and whether Jonathan Schwartz’s blog pays for itself, April 4, 2006

Selected Quote: …I came up with BVIa – for Blog Value Index a. It’s a simple equation to work out in quantitative terms whether the blog is paying for itself or costing the company money.

25) Robert Scoble – Much ado about blogging (Scoble, you didn’t answer the question), March 31, 2006

Selected Quote: …I gave them stuff like “blogging doubled sales at Stormhoek winery, according to its CEO.” Or “Munjal Shah, CEO of Riya, says blogging is very important to his new company.” Or “Axosoft raised more than $14,000 in just a few days with nothing more than a few links on some blogs.” Or “Foldera got more than one million signups for its service in 17 days by doing nothing more than talking to six bloggers.” Or, a tailor in the UK saw his sales go up by 10x by doing a blog.

26) You may also be interested in seeing reviews (by marketing & PR professionals) of large-company corporate blogs – check out the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki – a list of Fortune 500 company blogs and links to reviews of many of the blogs, including reviews of:

• AMD, John Cass
• Delta Airlines, Richard Young
• eBay’s Developers Program Blog, Alison Nicole Grise
• McDonald’s, Laura Spencer
• Sun Microsystems, Nigel Vanderford

27) For those of you interested in how individual bloggers are generating income, check out – Paula’s New List of Blogger Salaries, by Paula Neal Mooney, June 1, 2007. Paula provides a list of (120 at the moment) bloggers and their estimated income.

I hope this list of resources was helpful. Hopefully we’ll all be able to see more suggested resources through comments to this post…