Is Your Local Business Blog Resonating With Your Readers?

It is often hard to determine what type of impact your local business blog is having on its readers. Yes, there are page view statistics and comments on the actual posts, but even those two pieces of information can make it hard for a business to assess the type of connection its readers are having with a blog. Therefore, how can your local business assess whether the content it’s providing is resonating with its readers and hopefully attracting new ones?

Even though statistics, data, and comments to your local business posts won’t provide your organization with its overall connection with blog readers, it’s a good place to start assessing how your topics and stories are impacting those who regularly or occasional read it. Your blog should have a data tracking tool related to it. Depending on the sophistication of the tool, you may just get number of page views in a particular day; however, you may also get additional more detailed information. Further, you’ll also be able to review which local business posts are being shared, whether via social media or mail, the most. Finally, you’ll also have any direct comments readers have made. It’s important to note though, it is generally understood, per this local business article on blogging, only roughly two percent of your blog readers will comment.

It can be helpful to compile all this data into one location so your local business can determine any trends. What topics seemed to get viewed, shared, and commented on the most? What about the reverse (i.e. what topics appear not to resonate with your readers)? This review of information can lead you to more questions about what direction you should take your local business blog in the future. These questions can be used in the next phase of the process to assess and enhance the impact of your blog.

Although it’s possible to review the data and get significant insights, in order to truly understand if your blog is resonating with readers, it’s often necessary to take the step of asking them directly. One fellow blogger recently wrote a piece about his experience surveying his readers to find out how they felt about his blog and whether he was influencing their opinions. He found the data from his blog really didn’t tell him the full picture of how his blog was resonating and influencing his readers. Likely if you do the same with your local business blog readers, you’ll find the same. However, unlike this fellow blogger, you may not want to phone your blog readers to ask them their opinions. You could consider instead offering a small incentive to entice readers to take the time to complete a short survey. This survey could contain the questions you developed during your review of the data. This tool would in essence allow you to ask your readers to provide context around what you are seeing in your statistics from your blog. Further, it will open up a dialog about your blog content with your readers which will also allow you to further enhance your content.