Some say that B.L.O.G. stands for "Better Listing On Google". So, if that's what comes to mind when people blog, let's start asking ourselves what our personal R.O.B.s are? Or, our "Return On Blogging"? (I didn't purposefully name this new blog industry metric I'm proposing after myself, nor am I referencing me being your own personal jesus, it just happens this new metric I'm developing fits my name. Really.)
The Personal Economics of Blogging
Those of you within the financial industry who may read this post are familiar with R.O.I. (return on investment); now we in the online communications industry have the R.O.B. But, what, you ask, exactly, does R.O.B. entail? Do we really need another metric? Fact is, we certainly do. Many of us are spending an inordinate number of hours at our computers blogging away night and day. And, a blogger today has a number of "return on blogging" goals he or she may wish to obtain through blogging, items like:
- a bigger social network
- key opinion leader interaction
- profit from ad space sold
- increased search engine placement
- better writing skills
- increased workplace or personal productivity
- job leads
The New R.O.B. Blog Metric
Point is, sometimes after putting all the effort into your blog by habit, you have to stop, just like any other investment of time or committment into anything, and ask yourself, "What is my R.O.B.? What is my opportunity cost for doing this?" If your R.O.B. isn't what you wanted, try measuring it and set goals for your blogging future.
Measuring Your Personal R.O.B.
Measuring how the blogosphere is working for you is subjective. But you should ask yourself questions like the following (attempting to quantify everything per annual or monthly time frames) and once you get percentages for each specific item, add them all up and average them out for your own personal R.O.B.:
- how much has my Goolge page rank increased?
- how much has my Technorati ranking increased?
- how many more sales leads have I generated from blogging?
- how many new email newsletter subscribers do I have?
- how many more job leads have I received?
- how much has my personal social network grown?
- how many new people have linked to my blog?
- how many new people read my RSS feed?
Setting R.O.B. Goals
Once these items are averaged out, that is your Personal R.O.B.
What's the use? Well, you can determine your areas of "Blog Weakness" and "Blog Strength". And if you are doing very well in one area, but not so well in another, you may determine you should shift your blogging efforts over to your area of comparative advantage. Lastly, measure your R.O.B. and set goals for a higher personal R.O.B. for yourself in six months. Shoot me an email at pr.machine@gmail.com and tell me how you Personal R.O.B. is doing.
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