As I was disembarking from my G4 this morning (G5 is in the shop again…sigh…)….I was thinking how advertisers are taking blogs and social media seriously these days.  If you don’t believe me, look no further than the IAB issuing “definitions” of metrics that can be used for media planning purposes.

God forbid we don’t extend advertising to every single surface of the planet, here’s some insights on what the IAB is thinking about blog analytics in particular.

They divide the measurements into four major categories.  Below are the measurement categories and a high-level overview of what they measure.

1. Conversation Size – How many sites/blogs and how many links exist regarding the particular topic. In other words, how important is this topic overall?
2. Site Relevance – This is based on how consistently a given blog or site is discussing a particular topic.  Meaning, was it just discussed once or is it a daily, weekly, monthly occurrence?
3. Author Credibility – How many links into the blog for the given topic and the duration for which the topic has been discussed on the site/blog.  Is the blog popular with the right audience and for how long have they been discussing the topic?
4. Content Freshness and Relevance – Primarily the frequency of posting on the topic.

If you are really interested in these guidelines, you should definitely check out the IAB guidelines in detail.

In a lot of ways, the IAB Guidelines are very similar to how Google indexes various pages and assigns them rank for a particular keyword or phrase.  Obviously if an SEO wizard like Randfish read that last sentence; he would be inclined to slap me upside the head.  But there are certainly some similarities to what the IAB proposes and the Google secret sauce.

Anyways, the good news is that advertisers are finally figuring how to spend money on blogs.  I’m not saying the methodology above is perfect, but it’s a good start.

Oh my goodness…can you just smell all those advertising pennies adding up?  Pretty soon my blogging profits will exceed those generated by my three-legged mule farming operation.

So pass around the offering plate because I’m getting rich one post at a time.

You know the type.  He’s “creative”.  He’s a “genius”.   He interrupts you and everyone else with an incessant flow of ideas.  And he’s never measured the success or failure of anything.  He just moves on to the next “big idea”

If you’ve been in business for very long, the name of this certain someone is on the tip of your tongue.  They believe that marketing is a series of creative thoughts via trial and errors; no measurement needed.

This approach is very exciting, but incapable in terms of generating consistent results.

The truth is that you can be BOTH creative and quantitative.  You CAN measure the results of your brainstorming sessions.  And you can iterate on a theme to drive incremental sales and drive down costs.

But you need to start with the facts.  You need a analytics or business intelligence system that can provide you and your co-workers the stats you need to judge a campaign as a victory, defeat or worth further trials.

Many organizations have not even made it that far.

Once you are armed with your reports; carefully approach your local genius.  Help him/her understand that the goal is to increase the winning percentage; not to broadcast the failures.

I’ve been down this path before…more than once.  Believe me, it might take a while, but in the end the creative will be happy you exist.  The first time you are able to show that something they did was a measurable success…they will want to tell the world.