I was watching the special edition of Glengarry Glen Ross this evening, and one of the special features on the disc is an interview between Jack Lemmon and Charlie Rose talking about “success.”
Success, said Lemmon, is usually judged by what others think of you, rather than what you think of yourself. Real success can only gained by defining it for yourself. While this line of argument probably won’t fly with your CMO when he asks if a campaign was successful, I believe it’s still an important point to keep in mind when planning a project like a corporate blog.
Bill Sweetman’s on the Canadian marketing blog OneDegree.ca covers a pretty thorough list of metrics that can be used to evaluate success, but what’s missing from this list is the fact that the value of a blog cannot be measured entirely quantitatively. To me, a large part of the benefit of a corporation taking up blogging is in the necessary cultural change that a (good) corporate blog requires.
Success for a corporate blog is dependent largely on how you as an organization defines success. For some, it may be by the numbers, but blogging is something that can only be quantified to a certain degree.
I met with a colleague of mind today who just launched a blog for the theatre company that he works for. It has mediocre stats by any measure, but has markedly increased the number of patrons who introduce themselves to the Artistic Director on opening night because their goal was to make a position that is usually fairly stale and almost figurehead-like more closely tied to the community of the company.
I’ve had job offers, made friends, dated, and made business connections as a result of blogging. I’d consider this fairly successful… but to be honest, I rarely check my stats, if ever. Technorati can’t measure these things because it’s not part of the standard definition of success.
Success can be an improved marketing culture, it can be the quality of feedback from customers, and it can be business relationships (monetary or otherwise) that come from adopting a philosophy of conversation with your customers, with your market and with your entire community.
The benefits of blogs for organizations can go far beyond mere numbers, and before you can say whether or not a corporate blog is indeed successful, take a page from Jack Lemmon and decide exactly what success means to you. ROI is important, but if that’s your sole reason for taking up a corporate blog, you’re best to stick with something a little more traditional.
