Although many business blogs may seem to be posting frantically to up their search engine optimization, good blogs open up a dialogue with their customers. The business blog is an informal arena to discuss business topics and industry trends. Customers can have a say in this online medium by commenting on blogs or interacting with it in other ways, like sharing. To understand what customers want, in terms of information at least, businesses can track three metrics of customer feedback.

Commenting

Many business blogs have the ability for readers to post comments at the bottom of the page. This is an opening for customer dialogue. Although many blog posts may remain for months without comments, it is likely that the number of comments will increase over time as more customers find the post. Once customers start posting, businesses have a chance to directly interact with readers by responding to questions or elucidating a point. The questions that customers ask might also give the bloggers an idea of what else to write about. Tracking the comments in a blog is central to understanding what customers want from the blog.

Social Sharing

Some blogs have the option to “share” the blog post through different mediums, like Twitter or Facebook. Readers can click on these links to promote the blog post on their social media accounts. Tracking the number of clicks on each blog post can give content marketers a good idea of what posts are effective and worth sharing. These blogs are what the customer wants, in essence. Customers are voting with clicks instead of through a time-consuming survey.

Number and Length of Visits

Google Analytics and other tools can track the number of people landing on a blog page. In most cases, a high number of people would imply that the blog reflects the sort of information that customers want. However, content marketers should also track the length of visits. Sometimes a link to a blog will send many visitors, but no one will stay to read the blog. If you see 100,000 hits and only an average reading time of 15 seconds for a 500 word article, this might imply that the title is something customers want to know more about, but they weren’t able to find the information they needed by skimming.

All of these mechanisms can give content marketers insight into customer feedback. However, interpreting these bits of feedback can be more complex than analyzing a survey response. Does an angry comment mean that the company’s online reputation is suffering or that there is simply an irate reader? The answers are not always clear, so we recommend contacting us to address your unique situation and questions.