Be a Publisher -- But Don't Use the Publishing Industry's Metrics

It is wonderful that new marketers have converted to inbound marketing by becoming publishers; however, many still need to transition away from measuring their success in the metrics of the media industry, page views.

Media companies rely on page views because they're easy to count, and because page views are the metric of monetization -- advertisers like to buy blocks of them.

But page views are not as useful for business blogs. Business blogs are monetized by readers who convert to leads and sales, so these are far better metrics to track.

In addition to inappropriate use of page views, many business bloggers use metrics that lack specificity. "Hits" is at the top of this list. Unless you're playing baseball, a "hit" has no specific meaning. It is a vague term that could refer to visitors, pageviews or clicks. If you are limiting your success measurements to hits, you are not at all thinking about your conversion or customer aquisition.

It is also a mistake to use "visits" as a primary success metric. Reporting on number of visits can be very misleading. For example, a single person could have visited your website 300 times. You may have 600 visits from only two people. Instead, focus on visitors. Visitors can convert into leads. Anonymous visits cannot.

So what measurements should you use to analyze the performance of your blog or website? Why inbound links, comments, visitors, leads and customers, of course!

What do you think? Are there any other measurements that are irrelevant to business?

Flickr Credit: bawoodvine