I was motivated to write this post based on some discussion at the CEO Bloggers’ Club.
I contend that the investment by most companies in blogging has been minuscule to date. Plus the number of companies making investments is minuscule. When corporate blogging does become more prevalent, I think more sophisticated frameworks for measuring ROI will evolve. These frameworks could be based on models from online marketing, accounting, or finance theory.
So what can one do today to get a grasp on ROI?
Rather than getting caught up in the minutia and complexity of trying to measure returns directly, here might be another way to think about this. It applies the concept of opportunity cost from economics.
Given certain conditions (e.g., no blogging fatigue, no blogging addiction), bloggers may tend to ante up more when the returns are sufficiently positive. When the returns are negative (not sufficiently positive), they tend to take money (i.e., blogging time) off the table and perform other things (this relates to the concept of opportunity cost).
Thus, if you can measure the returns on the activity that you’ve switched to (presuming you’ve switched away from blogging), then you can presume that your blogging return is not more than the activity you’ve switched to.
A little abstract, but here’s another way of coming at it. One could hypothetically say, how much $$ (or $$/hr) would it take you to switch away from blogging entirely (or for an hour, a year, or all of the above, say)? As you go through the complex process of thinking through this, you get an idea of time invested (which is the primary investment for most) versus the minimum return you require to stay with blogging.
If that number turns out to be less than or equal to $0, well then you are either a blogging addict or being coerced by your employer.
So rather than looking at blogging ROI, what’s your blogging opportunity cost?
Steve Shu
Managing Director, S4 Management Group