Corporate Blogging Series IV:Content Attractiveness and the Consumer.

Debbie Weil’s post on tools to measure the success of a corporate bloghighlights the usage of Google Analytics to measure statistics, page views, unique visits, time on site, maximum page views and feedburner to track RSS.

She also talks about inbound links to the corporate blog. Technorati rankings make sense, but I still feel that Technorati Authority will be a better measure. The take on comments is relevant, as comments appear to be a better measure of consumer interest than no. of unique page visits and time spent by a user on an exploratory search, who happened to land onto the particular webpage. Though useful from a long term point of view for generating brand impact, of greater interest to an organisation is a somewhat ‘engaged’ user who is significantly emotional about the brand enough to comment on an organisational post. What is more interesting here, than the kind of post which garnered the maximum views is the kind of post which garnered the maximum comments!!

Blogs attempt to change the flow and balance of information and try to shape perceptions by presenting a unified mass market branding image which can be confronted by a counter flow of dissenting opinions, alternative sources of information and messages.It is these opinions which are reflected through the user comments that are significant.

In this context, a user perception survey for content on a corporate blog can help categorise content into different categories. Further, ascertaining no. of comments per post in each category separately and statistically analysing the same can add value to the process of generating accountability for a blog.

Content attractiveness may well hold the key to building consumer engagement through social media.After all, a post responding to a brand related controversy may generate far more consumer interest than one about the organisation's CSR initiatives!!!