4 Ways to Measure Engagement on a Company Blog

The writing process of a multi-author company blog follows a specific pattern (at least it does here at The Center for Sales Strategy). The author submits their blog post, it goes through an extensive editing process (which includes finding the right title, keywords, calls-to-action, image(s), and relevant links within the post), then it gets scheduled in the content calendar, and finally it gets published.

After a post gets published, it's time to track engagement. In fact, it’s a good idea to measure engagement on a monthly or quarterly basis. That way, you can continue discussing the topics that got a high level of engagement and stop talking about the things that people aren’t interested in reading (or perhaps you can repurpose the content to be more targeted to your target persona and their interests).

In some niches, blog commenting is the way to measure engagement. For example, a recipe with 4,341 comments always looks impressive. Business blogs do not get the comment volume that recipe blogs do, and that’s okay. With a business blog, we have different goals, and we know there's no direct correlation between blog comments and customers. So we measure engagement in a different way.

Below are four questions to answer to determine if your readers are engaged:

1. Are people sharing your posts?

Are your posts easy to share? If someone shares your posts over social media, it’s a ringing endorsement for your content. It’s far more valuable than a comment on your blog. They’re telling their network to read something you created.

2. Are people reading your posts?

Look at the posts with the highest page views. You may be surprised at how many people are reading your content. Reading is a form of engagement because you’re providing valuable information for your target, and depending on where they are in the decision-making process, they may not be ready to buy what you’re selling just yet.

3. Are people answering your calls-to-action?

A business-blogging best practice is to include a Call to Action (CTA) in most—if not all—of your blog posts. When you publish your blog posts, are people clicking and taking action?

4. Do visitors download premium content?

If you have forms to fill in order for the visitor to download your premium content, are they filling them out and downloading? How many people are downloading your checklists, white papers, eBooks, and more? Is that number increasing from month to month?

Now that you have a better idea of how to measure engagement, let's talk about ways to increase engagement. Because the more engaged your audience, the more likely they are to become repeat visitors, and ultimately, customers.

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