Anne Holland over at Marketing Sherpa has written a really thoughtful article on how to calculate a blog’s reach & influence. I have roughly 1,000 Feedburner subscribers, most of which probably read my posts & another few hundred/thousand unique daily site visitors (depending on volume of posts). This blog is admittedly not a mass market blog, so I doubt I’ll ever get to the numbers that TechCrunch get to, but at least I feel that my readership is influential and consists of a number of bloggers (as you can see from MyBlogLog).
Anne points out the following points to be used in order to measure influence/reach (edited - read full article here):
#1. Traffic (don’t trust it alone)
Media buyers usually ask, “How much traffic is there and how much is unique?” and leave it at that. Paul notes the problem with traffic stats for blogs is that so much may come from search engines and other sites linking to one particular posting.
#2. RSS feeds
Hundreds of thousands of sites — ranging from automated splogs to high-profile online media — use RSS feeds from good independent bloggers as part of their content. Paul noted that his own posting headlines often show up on places, such as O’Reilly media. That’s pretty impressive reach.
#3. Inbound hotlinks
As with other media, traffic volume can be far less important than traffic quality. In the blog world, quality usually equates with influence. A blog read by a tiny group of people can have gargantuan influence if they are the right people.
#4. Search position, part one
You can research a blog’s search position in two ways — first, does that blog appear for key terms related to your business or brand?#5. Search position, part two
Separately, also review a bloggers’ general search ranking under keywords associated with his or her own “brand,” such as their personal name, their blog’s name, their tagline, etc.#6. Voice
You want to allay your brand with the type of voice that you feel your audience (investors, press, customers, etc.) would respect.
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