USA Today pop culture blogger Whitney Matheson gets over 1,800 comments on a slow day

Flying out to Las Vegas from D.C. yesterday (to speak at BlogWorld Expo) I found myself sitting next to Whitney Matheson, USA Today's (hugely popular) pop culture blogger. Whitney's Pop Candy, if you're not familiar with it, is the paper's most popular blog.

She covers the "indie" side of things which means her blog  "unwraps pop culture's hip and hidden treasures," according to the tagline. OK, so this blog is waaay cooler than People Magazine. (It's up for the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Culture blog tonight.)

Whitney's got a cold today and is feeling under the weather... so she's only posted once so far. But not to worry, her fan base of thousands will do the talking for her. As of this writing, there are over 1,850 comments on today's entry.

And the connection to corporate blogging is... how in heck do you cultivate a community of passionate, devoted (er, fanatic?) readers? Southwest Airlines' blog (on my panel today at BlogWorld) is doing a good job at this.

But there is no exact formula. You have to fill a need. Whitney says her readers, who mostly have "boring, awful" jobs, tune into her blog several times a day. Listen to Whitney below:

5 (free) tools to measure the success of a corporate blog

Here are five tools (via Stephan Becker) to measure the success of a corporate blog. A measurable ROI is a key driver for the launch of any corporate (or CEO) blog, so these are useful - if not definitive. The comments are mine:

1. Google Analytics

I love Google Analytics (it's free, BTW). Great for looking at visitor stats (unique visits, time on site, etc.), geography (what countries are your visitors coming from) and - perhaps most useful - sites that are referring traffic to your blog. These referring links give you a heads-up on where your blog is being mentioned in mainstream media or by other bloggers.

2. RSS Analytics

He cites FeedBurner. Use it to find out how many folks have signed up for the email updates for your blog (note: you can see the actual email addresses) as well as  how many have subscribed to your RSS feed.

3. Number of podcast and videocast downloads

Useful only if you are posting videos and/or podcasts to your blog.

4. Links pointing to your corporate blog

Type this into Google's search box: link:mycorporateblog.com

So for example: link:fastlane.gmblogs.com  (2,350 links) or link:blogs.sun.com/jonathan (9,080 links).

Stephan doesn't mention Technorati rankings but for what it's worth, GM's Fastlane blog ranks (as of today) #10,781 on Technorati and Jonathan Schwartz's CEO blog ranks #766 - out of over 100 million blogs. (This blog currently has a Technorati rank of #7,823.)

5. Number of Comments

This metric is always tricky as it's somewhat unpredictable. Remember that the ratio of lurkers vs. readers can be as high as 90:10 (only 10 percent leave Comments). So there is no exact science to evaluating your number of Comments.

Stephan makes a good point: "Controversial or ‘hot’ topics are more likely to generate feedback just as much as well thought through and professionally written blogs." In other words, you often don't know what will ignite commentary from your readers. In addition, it depends how tech or blog savvy your readers are.

Yes, I know that sounds impossible to some... who is *not* blog savvy these days?? You'd be surprised. It's often necessary to educate your readers on how and why to leave a Comment. A well-written Comments Policy (links to policy for Sony's new Electronics Blog) can do just that.

Useful Links

Top 5 sources to measure the success of your corporate blog by Stefan Becker

Blog Writing Tips from Lorelle VanFossen

5 Tips to Run a Corporate Blog from Steve Rubel (on Wired's Wiki)

Technorati's Peter Hirshberg on Japanese bloggers, Jello and the shoe shine guy

Technorati chairman Peter Hirshberg gave a fab opening keynote at last week's conference on corporate communication and technology held by The Conference Board in New York.

Apologies for taking so long to get this post up. I've been going non-stop. I was on the blogging panel for The Conference Board, did blog training with a corporate client and then was on another panel for the Annual ASJA meeting. Fun week in nyc.

Here are a few highlights of his presentation:

Why Japanese is the leading language of the blogosphere

Texting! In Japan, blogging often means texting a one-liner which automatically posts to your blog. (Read more about Japanese bloggers and their mobile Internet use.)

Want to ignite CGM (consumer generated media or content)? Your brand has to match the passions of your customers

He gave as an example use of the word "Jello" on Elise Bauer's popular Simply Recipes blog. She wrote a post titled Why I Love Jello...  on November 29, 2006, noting also that she had a case of "wicked bad flu." The entry received 97 comments from readers.

By mentioning Jello, Elise was tapping into her readers' passion. They in turn linked to her post on their own blogs. Mention of the brand spiked in the blogosphere (also because of the holidays).

Her blog gets one million visits a month, according to Peter.

What the shoe shine guy knows about digital media strategy... A lot

Peter has made a series of very funny man-on-the-street videos over the past few years, asking New Yorkers what the word blog means, asking directions "to the blogosphere," etc.

(You can see some of his videos here.)

He showed us one of his classics, a video interview with the shoe shine guy at Grand Central Station in July 2004.

While he's shining Peter's shoes, the man opines about whether blogging will take off. And if it does, what it will mean.

"I really don't think this blogging thing will take off... But if it does take hold and become infectious I would imagine it's going to take several years."

Peter interrupts to ask: "Who's it gonna hurt and who's it gonna benefit?"

The shoe shine guy replies: "It's gonna benefit whoever owns it... and it's gonna hurt the publishing companies."

Remind me again why we need all those MBAs to explain business strategy to us?

Technorati's new State of the Live Web report: all systems a go, blogosphere continues to expand, Japanese is #2 language, etc.

Dave Sifry's newest State of the Blogosphere is up. He calls it the State of the Live Web - April 2007. You can gorge on stats and charts relating to the blogosphere. Here's his summary of what's new:

• 70 million weblogs
• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
• 1.4 new blogs every second
• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
• 1.5 million posts per day, or...
• 17 posts per second
• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days (Ed note: slower growth than previously when it took 180 days to go from 5 to 10 million blogs)
• 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter (this is a bit garbled; what he's saying is that there are now 22 blogs in the top 100 most popular Web sites; the rest are mainstream media sites - and that users aren't distinguishing between MSM and top blogs for news and information)
• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37% (interesting, huh?!)
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8% (generally agreed that this number is lower than it should be because blockers prevent Technorati from counting all Chinese blogs)
• Italian fourth at 3%
• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
• English the most even in postings around-the-clock
• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags (Sifry makes note of the increase in the use of tags )
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

Blogosphere continues to grow (but more slowly)

Below is the growth in the total number of blogs. Not surprisingly, the rate of growth has slowed.

Japanese overtakes English

Newest State of the (Live) Web from Technorati's Dave Sifry

Always cogent Technorati CEO Dave Sifry is back today with a preview of the April 2007 State of the Live Web. Stay tuned for his full write up which will be replete with charts, stats, observations and analysis. He's updated the name for his twice annual State of the Blogosphere because...

It's informative, entertaining, vexing, touching, enervating and, every once in awhile, utterly unforgettable. It is, truly, the Live Web. -- Dave Sifry

He notes in today's preview that tagging is now hugely popular -- i.e. assigning a keyword or keyword phrase to categorize your blog or podcast or other UGC - user-generated content.

Technorati now includes tags broken out into categories for blogs, video, podcasts, music, people and events. More about Technorati tags.

If you look below, you'll see that I've assigned several tags to this blog entry, including Dave Sifry and Technorati. Click on them and you'll understand how tagging helps you find and sort information on the Web.

Useful Link

State of the Blogosphere (all the links, stats and charts from Oct. 2004 - Oct. 2006)

Freakonomics blog ponders the question of who comments on blogs: great reading

Stephen Dubner (co-author with Steven Levitt of Freakonomics) ponders the question of who Comments on blog posts and why. Most readers don't leave comments. In fact, "the ratio of readers to commenters is gigantic," he notes. Then he riffs about this statistical conundrum:

"I realize there is a selection problem here: anyone who responds to my question about why commenters comment is, alas, a commenter. Which means that regular commenters will be overrepresented in the comments — unless, of course, a whole bunch of you who never comment decide to go ahead and log in and, in the comments section, tell us why you never comment. Or why other people do." - Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics

And of course there's the follow-up post that summarizes the 113 comments he got: Why you comment on blogs.

I love this point that Dubner makes:

"Some of you said that you tend to comment on blogs where the blogger writes back in the comments section — which we typically don’t. This is simply a function of time; I love blogging but I do not want it take over my life. I do read all the comments, and sometimes respond privately. Very often, I believe the comments on this blog are better than the blog postings themselves. This makes sense: there are only two of us, and a lot of you. If you believe even a tiny bit in the wisdom of crowds, you have to love this dynamic." - SD

Great reading (Part 1 and Part 2). Also check out the Freakonomics Study Guide for students and instructors. Apparently the book is assigned reading in a variety of college courses. I loved it!

[via Judy Gombita]

Take Melcrum's Social Media Survey

My friends over at Melcrum Publishing are running a Social Media Usage survey. Click here to take it (it's quick).

You get a nifty free download at the end: Melcrum's Quick Start Guide to Social Media for Internal Communicators (a 23-page PDF).

The survey is aimed at large corporations and asks about your use (or intended use) of blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking tools, RSS, Second Life, online video, etc.

Social Media for Internal Communicators in London - March 22, 2007

I'm speaking at Melcrum's social media conference in London in a couple of weeks. Topic: What's Your Story? Getting the Tone and Content of Blogs Right. Attendees will get a copy of my Content Strategy Workbook -- one of the things that will be included in... (drum roll)... The Corporate Blogging Toolkit.

I'm developing it now. It's an extension of The Corporate Blogging Book, designed to be a practical blueprint and manual to launch a corporate or CEO blog.

Consider this a below-the-radar announcement. More TK.

60% say the ROI of corporate blogging does NOT need to be quantified and/or tied to the bottom line

Forrester's Charlene Li and several colleagues have published a new best practices study on The ROI of Blogging. It's fascinating reading for those of us who've been wrestling with the question of how you can quantify the impact of a corporate blog. I'll make a few comments about Forrester's new report in a moment.

Does corporate blogging need to be tied to the bottom line? "No..."

But first I want to tell you about a rather surprising response I'm getting to the "ROI of blogging" question in an informal survey I'm running. Thus far over 250 respondents have responded to the corporate blogging and social media survey I posted on Feb. 2, 2007. (Respondents range from Fortune 1000 to small business and one-person shops. Majority are small business.) The answer to the question "Does corporate blogging need to be tied to the bottom line" is a pretty clear "No."

Specifically, 60 percent say that the success of a corporate blog does *not* need to be measured in dollars. 25 percent say it does. And another 15 percent have interesting comments to make. A sampling follows:

Q: Does corporate blogging need to be tied to the bottom line?

A: from Senior Consultant at a Fortune 500 company: "No"

A: from Marketing Director of a small company (under 100 employees):

"No" would be an irresponsible answer; of course it has to be tied to
the bottom line, but it doesn't have to be measured like e-mail or a
coupon campaign. It's more like event sponsorship or PR."

A: from Communications Director of a small company (under 50 employees):

"Yes, but it is not a direct investment to return measure. It is more
about here is the investment we made to change our culture (or the
perception of our culture) and here is how the new culture has
benefited the bottom line."

The survey is still open. Click here to take it. The survey is now closed.

Oh, and what do I make of the survey results? Well, I guess it's pretty obvious: many marketers, execs and business owners aren't as concerned with calculating the ROI of blogging as they are with more practical challenges: how much time will it take? Who will write the blog? What should the topic be??

More about Forrester study on ROI of Business Blogging

I've been as fascinated as anyone by the ROI of blogging question. I devote a chapter to it in my book where I call it ROB (Return on Blog).

I like Forrester's approach to quantifying the ROI. The model they've built is elegant, smart and tidy. Quantifying "risk" by 1) identifying uncertainty and 2) calculating probability (...that something will go terribly wrong; a PR disaster, etc.) is especially clever. 

I also like the way Forrester uses proxies to calculate some of the benefits. For example, a blog provides an on-demand focus group compared with the cost of running a traditional focus group once a month for a year (total cost: $180,000). See nifty diagram. That last number came out of the accompanying case study on GM's FastLane blog: Calculating the ROI of Blogging: A Case Study.

Trouble is, even Forrester admits that "calculating the ROI of blogging has limitations" and "the exact benefits of blogging are impossible to measure" (I'm quoting directly from the Jan. 24, 2007 Best Practices report.)

So where does that leave us?

Pretty much back where we started, wouldn't you say? Corporate blogging is valuable because:

- it creates a conversation with customers

- you can learn a lot from the conversation

- it can lead to mentions in mainstream press (so PR value)

- Word of mouth marketing

- it gives a company higher Google search results, etc.

What do you think?? Would leave to hear your thoughts on this. (Hint: use the Comments link below.)

Useful Links

New ROI of blogging report from Forrester (Charlene Li)

Corporate Blogging ROI - Now We're Talking (Mario Sundar on the MProfs blog; read the comments. Very interesting.)

Forrester creates a model to measure blogging ROI (Steve Rubel on Micro Persuasion)

Take a quick survey on corporate & CEO blogging and your use of social media tools... win a signed copy of The Corporate Blogging Book

I'm running a quick survey on corporate and CEO blogging. It's aimed at marketing, PR and communications professionals. And any other execs who read this blog. And it's designed as a reality check.

Lots of smart folks (Jeremiah Owyang is one) are saying that 2007 will be the year of executing -- as opposed to asking why or what -- when it comes to business blogs. But I want to know what *you* are thinking.

I'm also asking about your use of social media tools like Technorati and del.icio.us.

Take the survey (3 - 5 minutes)

Click here to take my quick survey on Corporate and CEO blogging and Your Use of Social Media Tools. I'll share results on this blog.

If you need a bribe...

Two lucky (re-read this and decided it sounded obnoxious... well you decide if it's lucky!) survey respondents will win a signed copy of my book, The Corporate Blogging Book (Penguin Portfolio 2006).

Kind words about the book from Roger C. Parker...

It's really a spectacular book, an example of just about everything an effective non-fiction book should be. As expected, it is a "fast read" with numerous underlinings and pauses to reflect.

-- Roger C. Parker, design guru and author (Jan. 31, 2007)

Edelman releases two new studies along with highlights of a third - download them here

Edelman recently released two new studies:

1. 3rd Annual New Frontiers in Employee Communcations (download the PDF here)

and

2. A Corporate Guide to the Blogosphere (links to Edelman Europe CEO David Bain's blog entry; download the PDF here)

They also 3. announced preliminary results of the 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer (download PDF of 2006 Trust Barometer here)

Great stats and anecdotes to chew over, including this blockbuster:

"Nearly one-third of companies are blogging [note: is this internal or external blogging?]; one-third are podcasting."

Also, "Business is more trusted than media and government in every region of the globe."

I haven't had a chance to read any of these thoroughly but want to get the links up. Sounds like the corporate blogging stat is based on a fairly small sample size (senior corporate comms execs at 75 Fortune 500 companies).