Blogging Performance, part 2

After the reading the comments on my previous Blogging Performance post, I decided to revise my mission statement:

Mission: To be a top of mind destination for performance management information and interactive discussions.

According to my jumpstart methodology, the next step is to define specific objectives using the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives: financial, customer, process, and learning.

I don’t have any financial objectives for this blog. I’m not expecting this blog to produce advertising or consulting revenue, or to drive any incremental software for my employer. So why do I do it then? I’ve always wanted to write the proverbial great American novel but I’m not sure I have the talent or time. I use professional writing to scratch the itch and hopefully improve my skills.

Writing this blog also forces to me to research and think carefully about performance management; I’m clearly learning more about the topic as a result. Finally, I have to admit there’s a certain amount of pride I get when people mention my blog. It probably even enhances my reputation which can’t help but impact my career. Interestingly, these objectives are all related to the learning and growth perspective.

From the process point of view, I’ve outsourced my infrastructure to wordpress but, if issues come up, I could bring it in-house so it’s worth keeping an eye on response time and uptime. More importantly, my blog will only achieve top of mind status if the content is valuable and updated frequently. As a result, I need a process objective around timeliness of postings.

What about the objectives from the customer/reader perspective? Presumably, you want this blog to be a reliable source of information – although I admit I’m not sure how I’m going to measure that objective. If I’m going to achieve my mission, you need to perceive this as a forum for discussion of PM topics. As a result, the number of comments is a better indicator of performance than the number of readers.

It’s not lost on me that I’ve only listed three perspectives. I struggled to come up with a fourth until I reconsidered my mission statement. How will I know if I’ve reached top of mind? Two potential measures are the number of other blogs that link to mine and the number of external posts that mention my posts. These are measures of Community which, for a blog, seems like a very appropriate fourth perspective.

As before, I’ll open it up to feedback before going on to KPIs.

6 Responses to Blogging Performance, part 2

  1. Robert E November 1, 2007 at 3:12 pm #

    For your objectives on the customer/reader perspective, I am hoping you will having qualitative as well as quantitative measurements. While numbers of responses is important, if they are off-topic, like “Great to see you last week”, or only quick affirmation, ” Yes, I agree”, they won’t promote a real discussion or forum on the topic.

  2. Jonathan November 3, 2007 at 8:38 pm #

    Excellent point Robert. Quality is more important than quantity. Maybe the KPI should be something like the “% of blogs that have at least two discussion comments”.

  3. Bob November 10, 2007 at 5:43 am #

    Interesting that the revision to your mission statement removes the word “trusted” – a noble goal but in the end not as powerful (or measurable!) as top-of-mind.

    You might be interested in web analytics blogger Avinash Kaushik’s blog goals:
    http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/blog-goals/

  4. crossderry January 4, 2008 at 9:25 pm #

    Hi Jonathan,
    Have you considered using your Technorati rank or authority? It would be a reasonable proxy for “trusted.”

    I’d probably go with “Authority” because it is more straightforward measure (http://support.technorati.com/faq/topic/71)

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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