Although business blogs are quickly chewing their way up the marketing food chain, there still remains a dirty little challenge that must be overcome. That bright orange RSS icon over on the side of your blog can be a knight in shining armor. And it can be a veritable black hole of un-quantifiable uncertainty. (Don’t write me about the double negative. I liked the way it sounded. :-))

Seriously though, RSS feeds, and RSS aggregators in particular have created a client-centric information sharing revolution. Topically focused communities, connection, and dialog – they’re all there. And yet simultaneously RSS technology has created a marketing impact tracking challenge that the vast majority of blogging “pros,” marketing gurus, and business bloggers have been ignoring.

Maybe it’s the buzz about blogs right now. Maybe it’s the thought that ignorance will silently generate a solution all on it’s own. Or maybe it ‘s that it’s just easier to “guesstimate” (occasionally one of my favorites.)
Whatever the reason, if I were to white wash the obvious tracking challenges with RSS feeds and leave you without some solutions I’d be doing you a disservice. I don’t want you to have to say, “I kinda feel like my business blog is working.”

The challenge that RSS aggregators currently bring to the business blog marketing feast is that it’s difficult to sort genuine page views from robotic server hits. Feed readers tap your business blog at varying rates, but you don’t know if the people on the other end of the feed are reading a post that’s been called up by their aggregator. You can use services like FeedBurner to identify your total number of RSS subscribers, but you can’t get a quantifiable read on page views.

The good news is, the market is already responding. In a recent article by Zachary Rodgers on ClickZ Network (http://www.clickz.com/features/insight/article.php/3460841) Dick Costolo (cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner) said the company is getting better at reporting as well as user actions.

“We measure how widely subscribed particular feeds are for publishers that are using us,” he said. “We’re also starting to measure the number of times items are fed and read.” FeedBurner plans to offer a single pixel tracking mechanism (sometimes referred to as web beacons or web bugs ) for individual posts via a premium feature.”

That’s a step in the right direction for sure. But what do you do until tracking tools catch up?
Well … other than generating quality content that educates, builds rapport, increases trust with your prospects/clients, and generates a response — here are three other steps you can take right now to get a more accurate read on the impact of your business blog and feed traffic.

1. Track yourself on the net. Monitor the web for mentions of the following:

• Your name
• The names of other authors on your blog/s
• Your blog title
• Unique names of your products or services
• Your company name
• Your keywords

Start recording your findings in an Excel spreadsheet and scoring each mention on a scale of one to 10. You can invest more advanced solutions like Cymfony or New Media Strategies to find these mentions. But simple solutions like Technorati, or Google Alerts will work just fine for most business bloggers.

When you start keeping a log of mentions and their sources (inside and outside the media,) you’ll quickly see patterns of online and offline buzz begin to emerge. Each mention individually means nothing. But even as short a time period as 30 to 60 days of tracking can transform those passing mentions into solid data that helps measure the “word of mouth marketing” strength of your blog.

2. Track, score, and chart your comments and trackbacks on at least a weekly basis.

All comments and trackbacks are not created equal. Use those components of your blog as a source of quantifiable data.

Once again a simple Excel spreadsheet and a few minutes per day for the busiest business blog is all that’s needed to generate some really valuable human impact data.

3. Develop free “premium” content for readers to download or subscribe to, and track those click-throughs or subscriptions.

Just like you’d do on a regular website, create highly targeted reports, ebooks, or newsletters/ezines that directly compliment the niche focus of your blog.

Yes – I did say newsletter. Although a recent study by Pew Research showed that 25% of all web surfers are bypassing websites all together, they’re still looking for targeted information/education about and around their interests. If you’ve already established credibility with your blog content and have proven you can add to their growth with an email based publication – then it’s a pretty good bet they’ll register for it.

Plus, you’ve still got 75% of the market catching up with the technology. People who are still accustomed to the standard email delivery of content. This strategy makes sure you capture them as well.

A free report or ebook would work just as well. But don’t mislead or offer junk just to get a read on the quality of your traffic. That’ll certainly tick people of and have them dropping both your feed and your email delivered content.

Business Coaching Corner: This is not the place to try out some new download or ezine format. You need a solid benchmark and a proven track record to compare your on-blog downloads against. Use a free publication, download, or report that’s proven itself online or offline in another marketing channel.

The bottom line is that traffic volume is a nice broad measurement of your blog’s general visibility. But beyond that, it tells you nothing of your business blog marketing impact since you don’t know if that traffic is an aggregator, a competitor, or a serious reader.

When you develop your own simple human impact tracking, you’ll have the answers you need to improve your business blog, outsmart the competition – and most importantly – know the people in your market niche inside and out. Until improvements in tracking software catch up, this combined with what’s available in automated tracking are your best options.

John-Paul Micek
Click-and-Mortar Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

To learn how to create a comprehensive business blogging strategy that’ll increase traffic to your site, build trust and win more clients check out the “How to Business Blog” coaching course and video series.

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