When I announced the UK Recruitment Blog Awards last week someone commented “I think there needs to be evidence of some form of ROI before any awards are presented”.
Apart from the fact that I have no idea how I would even attempt to assess the ROI of the blogs nominated for the awards the main reason we’d never do this is that the return on investment from business blogging is different for each of us.
There are some sites which claim that they can help you Calculate Your Blogging ROI in 9 Steps (these guys actually have equations to help you work out the cost of your time vs money made!) and sometimes the ROI is very obvious as per this example from Steve Ward “ I published 4 or 5 pieces this year as part of a client campaign. They led to placements off the back of the magnetism and purpose of the content – so it’s tangible return” but in many cases blogging isn’t necessarily a sales exercise.
I was just about to list some of the reasons I blog when I found this article on which just about covers them all. However, I’ll give you my top five reasons anyway:
- It’s helped me build an audience
- Sharing knowledge helps other people
- Writing about something encourages me to investigate more
- People send me a shed load of stuff and I need somewhere to share it (true!)
- Honestly what sort of community site would I have if there was no blog?!
If you blog for yourself then reasons like this are pefectly acceptable. If you blog for your business then I guess you have some more commercially sound goals but I also bet the ROI (if you measure it) isn’t the same for everyone. Finally, if you are blogging to win business and are worried about your “return” this is actually an article worth checking out: 7 Reasons You’re Not Getting ROI From Your Content
