For those of you who remember the series of posts two years ago defining objectives for this blog, you’ll recall that I decided that average number of comments per post and number of unique visitors per month were better measures of my success than number of page views or frequency of posts. Regardless, I was more than a little disappointed when I realized that I’ve gotten out of my weekly rhythm this summer. As I haven’t had any time to work on my personal writing in almost two years, I’ve missed more than 5 posts this summer; I’ve missed a creative outlet.
Given that thought process, I wonder if frequency of posts might be a reasonable metric for me. Curious what others might think, I did a little informal research. Not surprisingly, there are dozens of posts about how to measure the success of the blogs. Most of the insightful ones seem to focus on the number of inbound links (essentially citations) or the average number of comments per post (essentially conversations).
However, my favorite summary came from a post entitled Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success. Avinash recommends six categories of metrics:
- Raw Author Contribution
- Holistic Audience Growth
- Conversation Rate
- Citations/ Ripple Index
- Cost
- Benefit / ROI
While Avinash’s measures of raw author contribution don’t include frequency, he does include this note:
The important thing is to measure: consistency. I find it builds traffic.
I agree, so frequency of posts is back as a measure to watch. And since Sunday posts seem to drive the most traffic, I know how I’ll be closing out my weekends.
That’s interesting… but it is definitely a good stats to look at. Hope you’re referring to “frequency of posts” from the same user. If that’s the case, that means you’re actually getting a returning visitor (which is high quality) — not one who passes and goes.