How to Truly Gauge Your Blogs Performance With Guest Expert: Rebecca Caldwell
I see you! 👀👀
You understand the importance of long form content in your business, so there’s a chance you are spending all your time (Fergie, anyone?)
Researching keywords
Prepping your outline
Writing your blog post
Emailing your humans about your blog
Promoting your blog on social media
After putting all of that effort in – wouldn’t it be such a bummer if you weren’t actually sure that spending your time and energy blogging was moving your business forward?
I feel you, friend!
Hi, I’m Rebecca and as a Marketing Measurement Specialist, I too want to spend my time on marketing that I know is driving my business forward!
This blog will help you do just that by covering:
How to think about your return on investment
How to analyze your blog’s performance
My favorite tools for tracking your blog
4 marketing metrics to measure your blog
How you can decide if your blog is working for you
Let’s get into it!
Understanding Your Blogging Return on Investment
I’m sure you’ve seen it proclaimed everywhere – 2024 is the return of the blog!
Blogs help you build trust and credibility for your audience!
Blogs allow you to go beyond the surface level and dive deep into different topics!
Not only can your blogs increase your website traffic, elevate your expert status, and produce sales for your business – your blog can support your business inside of your client experience systems!
What if you wrote a blog that answered a question so clearly your audience knew exactly what next steps to take?
What if you wrote a blog you could share inside of your evergreen email sequences that really helps people make a decision for themselves about whether or not to purchase one of your offers?
What if you wrote a blog that set the stage for your onboarding session and allowed your clients to hit the ground running as soon as they began working with you.
Now that we’ve talked about the intangible ways that blogging can support your business, let’s jump into the numbers!
I know you want to be able to answer, “Is blogging really worth it for me?”
And what better way to answer that question than to see proof with your own data!
How To Analyze Your Blog’s Performance
Before we rap about how to determine if your blog is working, let’s talk about the tools that can help you measure your efforts!
My 3 Favorite Tools for Measuring Your Blog’s Performance
The best part – all of these tools can be free! (depending on your website traffic levels)
Google Analytics is a free Google product that will help you track and measure your entire website’s performance. Google Analytics is installed by placing a piece of code on your website.
Google Search Console is another free Google product that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. There are various ways that you can connect your website to Google Search Console. I prefer to update the DNS records, be sure to choose the option that works the best for you!
A heat mapping software
Heat mapping software allows you to track user behavior on individual pages on your website. The two I’ve used and like? HotJar and Mouseflow. There are so many options for heat mapping software, so pick the one that works for you!
4 Marketing Metrics for Measuring Your Blog’s Performance
Traffic Sources
There’s a cut and dry way to see if your blog is driving website visits, by monitoring your organic traffic sources.
Think Google, Pinterest, the places you could be found with Search Engine Optimization.
Annnnd a not so cut and dry way, by thinking about how you are using your blog content in other ways.
Do you repurpose your blogs to social media? Do you use your blog content to drive traffic to your website via weekly newsletters? Have you seen an increase from those traffic sources?
Email List Growth
First things first, for this to be accurately gauged, you’ll want to make sure that you are including a way for your readers to opt in to your email list from your blog posts, either with a direct ask to join your email list, or with a content upgrade or free offer related to your blog post.
If you already have those systems in place, you can then dig into your email analytics – where did your email list growth come from? How much growth are you experiencing?
And if you're not sure how to determine that, that's where handy dandy UTM links can come into play, but that's for another blog post. 🤗
If you don’t already have an email list for your business, Natty’s here to help!
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who navigate away from your website after viewing only one page.
We want this to be as low as possible (like golf!)
The #1 question I like to ask myself when thinking about bounce rate is – “Did I give my readers enough opportunities to visit other pages on my website?”
Example: If you are driving traffic to your blogs via Pinterest, have you linked out to a few other blog posts inside of each of your blogs?
If you are anything like me, you want to know what the average bounce rate is, you can peep that here!
Average Session Duration
Average session duration is the average time users spend on a website.
This numbers girlie really likes to know what a good benchmark is, but fortunately/unfortunately (you pick) there is no baseline for this metric. I suggest that you notice what your average session duration is right now, and make a plan to improve it.
It’s you vs. you, babe!
How can you increase your average session duration? This ties right back into your bounce rate.
Are you making it really easy for readers to spend more time on your website by sparking their curiosity by linking to other relevant content?
If not, it’s time to do so! This is what website designers would call a customer journey and it’s not something to overlook. Every page of your website (including your blogs) should include a strategic action for your website visitors to take at any given time.
How do I know if my blog is working?
We totally want to make decisions based on data, but we’re only human — and our feelings matter too so here’s where we look at both!
Facts and feelings!
Remember, blogs are a long game, we’re not looking for overnight results.
Let’s check our feelings first:
How much lighter do you feel knowing you have resources to answer your leads questions?
How kind might it be to share a way for potential customers to make educated decisions on their own?
How good might it feel for your client to know they will have a resource to get them started off on the right foot?
In what ways does your blog make things easier for you?
How else could you be using your blog to make your life better?
Now, let’s check the facts:
Have you noticed an increase in website traffic from organic sources? (read:Google, but maybe Bing is your thing!)
Have you noticed an increase in your average session duration?
Have you noticed that your bounce rate has decreased?
Is your email list growing from your content upgrades and/or free offers?
You made it to the end! I hope you're leaving with a deeper understanding of how to measure your blog's performance and have to decide if blogging is actually working for your business.
The metrics we covered - traffic sources, email list growth, bounce rate, and average session duration - will give you cold hard facts, but don't forget to tune into your feelings about blogging too!
Remember: blogging is a long game and incremental changes can lead to massive results over time!
Struggling to gauge the effectiveness of your blog? Don't worry, I gotcha covered! Check out my free Marketing Measurement Playbook!
