If you ain’t got no goals, you ain’t got nothin’.
I am sure there is a country music song about KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and that song probably has the above chorus line. :)
There are three primary goals for this blog.
My über goal with my writings on this blog is to aspire to do what this fantastic quote states:
“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”
~ Edwin Schlossberg.
Beyond that you are here and hence already aware that I am quite obsessed with Web Insights, both qualitative and quantitative components. I have set goals for the blog in both of those areas, goals that will help measure a couple facets of success.
For this blog comments are a fantastic way for me to “measure” qualitative input, call it customer satisfaction or call it Voice of the Customer. So please keep sharing your comments, they are deeply appreciated.
My qualitative goal: Atleast 6 user comments per post.
For the quantitative I plan to use Technorati rankings to measure success. On paper Technorati’s premise is that if you publish content that people find useful then they will link to you, hence “voting” for a higher ranking, and a blog that adds value will have a higher Technorati ranking. My plan is do exactly that, publish great value add content and measure success.
[Everything below is for historical purposes only! I was tracking it at the start of the blog. For how I measure holistic success of this blog please see this post: Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success.]
My quantitative goal: Technorati top 10,000 by the end of this year, 2006.
Today, on May 31th 2006, that would translate into roughly 530 links from 162 sites (!!!), and the way blogs are growing the goal becomes tougher with each passing day. I don’t know that there are 162 plus websites that might be interested in the subject matter of this blog but we’ll see. (If you do have a blog in this area of interest please let me know.)
Goal Progress:
| Date | Technorati Rank | Technorati: Links / Sites | Alexa Rank |
| 15 May ‘06 (Start) | 1,200,157 | 0 / 0 | 1,609,077 |
| 17 May ‘06 | 211,031 | 34 / 14 | - |
| 24 May ‘06 | 142,914 | 56 / 20 | 521,486 |
| 26 May ‘06 | 128,020 | 58 / 22 | - |
| 30 May ‘06 | 109,958 | 73 / 28 | 354,810 |
| 07 Jun ‘06 | 85,087 | 88 / 35 | 307,190 |
| 13 Jun ‘06 | 61,940 | 129 / 45 | 258,694 |
| 20 Jun ‘06 | 41,556 | 207 / 62 | 239,961 |
| 27 Jun ‘06 | 33,828 | 272 / 74 | 197,771 |
| 04 Jul ‘06 | 28,566 | 282 / 86 | 177,666 |
| 11 Jul ‘06 | 20,198 | 328 / 108 | 142,544 |
| 18 Jul ‘06 | 18,527 | 382 / 126 | 93,243 |
| 25 Jul ‘06 | 17,691 | 399 / 134 | 84,039 |
| 01 Aug ‘06 | 13,187 | 496 / 173 | 81,634 |
| 08 Aug ‘06 | 11,740 | 551 / 192 | 81,634 |
| 15 Aug ‘06 | 9,744 (Yea!!) | 622 / 225 | - |
| Switching to bi-monthly | |||
| 29 Aug ‘06 | 8,831 | 697 / 255 | - |
| 12 Sept ‘06 | 7,985 | 768 / 277 | 73,593 |
| 26 Sept ‘06 | 6,853 | 897 / 329 | 72,291 |
| 10 Oct ‘06 | 5,509 | 1,051 / 396 | 68,132 |
| 24 Oct ‘06 | 4,625 | 1,123 / 431 | 77,277 |
April 10th, 2007 at 16:18
This posting reminds me I have much to learn about how to influence my website rankings. My site has already been on-line three months and I aim to utilize as many useful tools as possible to empower as many people as possible. To date, I have yet to investigate Alexa ranking systems. I encourage visitors to vote for my site through technorati, yahoo, google, and netvibes. I offer the option of RSS feeds.Although my visitors are growing, I haven’t yet found an effective strategy to encourage more interaction with visitors on blog or forums. People will email or not write at all. I have statistical goals for increasing traffic, but I haven’t yet reached them. My goal of empowering more visitors is hard to accurately measure without more feedback.
May 14th, 2007 at 09:18
[...] It is getting people you don’t know to read your blog that is the hard part. Looking at your number of blog subscribers and setting goals is a great way to make some level of accountability associated with the time spent on maintaining and writing your blog. If you are seeking some other blog goal metrics, Avinash has some great ones. [...]
September 7th, 2007 at 05:45
Awesome – I mean I haven’t seen somebody so particular about the blog goal. This analysis has actually made me align to your context – as you mentioned “The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think”
Thanks
-Ashish
pluGGd.in
September 13th, 2007 at 17:46
[...] Bloggers like Avinash are fantastic at responding to comments on his blog. He even follows up with personal emails. He’s presenting at Blog World in Vegas in November later this year. There’ll be thousands upon thousands there. And I bet if you were in the audience and wrote to Avinash to ask him a question or request a copy of the slides, he’d respond. Because that’s what he did with me when I saw him way back earlier this year at the Web 2.0 Expo. [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 02:00
I checked your PR and Alexa rank. It’s a great motivating factor for bloggers like me… I’m also going to make some real goals considering my strength and weaknesses, thank you for showing the way.
January 6th, 2008 at 11:56
Avinash, you did it again.
Ripped my head off and made me completely rethink both my own AND my client’s blogging programs.
Dude, you are a classic “beautiful mind” when it comes to these deeply technical, yet wonderfully insightful prose.
Avinash, I am in Seattle monthly (I live and have my businesses in Vancouver, WA, next to Portland, Oregon).
Let me buy you lunch or dinner sometime soon. You’ve inspired me on a Sunday when crafting valuable reports for my clients has just been boosted another few notches.
To your continued success,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.tv
February 14th, 2008 at 21:03
Avinash,
I’ve stumbled upon your blog, and have also been impressed – not only with your content, but with how you set goals for your blog in stone. That’s pretty cool!
I think that I will start using these types of metrics for my clients as well!
February 17th, 2008 at 18:53
Great goals. I’m impressed with your success and hope to be as successful myself. Some feedback for blog.cubicledropout.com
Thanks
August 10th, 2008 at 15:01
I like your goals, and I have a similar set of goals (although quite a bit less ambitious initially). How did you get 14 sites to link to you in your first 2 days? The beginning seems like it is always the hardest part, and you really got off to a bang. Did it come from just posting a ton and linking to others, or did you have a different startup strategy?
Thanks,
Danny
September 9th, 2008 at 13:14
I am facinated by your blog. Can I ask you one question? I just recently started a blog for my music band what if I get negative comments on my blog? Has this ever happened to you?
September 26th, 2008 at 10:46
[...] Then I stumbled across Occam’s Razor blog goals article by Avinash Kaushik. I am a big fan of his writing and all about analytics. The thing about blog goals really struck me and it was as if all the stars perfectly aligned together. “Everybody is monitoring their blog stats but what about their blogging goals?“ This was the single most thought that formed the basis for this wordpress plugin. Sure every dedicated blogger has set some goals for himself but how about letting your readers know about your blogging goals, so that they can help you acheive them and help keep you on track. [...]
September 26th, 2008 at 13:00
Hi Avinash,
Thank you for being the inspiration for our wordpress plugin that helps you monitor your blog goals. If you get chance please take a look. You can set your blog goals like Comments/post, Posts/month, Comments for each post etc.
You are the first person outside of our development that we are notifying about this plugin.
Regards
Mark
September 26th, 2008 at 13:01
Here is the link to the plugin http://www.dashboardzone.com/monitor-your-blog-goals-with-wordpress-plugin
December 28th, 2008 at 07:13
I tried everything to find my goals before I have no idea of what is best for me.Now I have come to realize that:No pains no gains.
I like these words:“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”which remind me how to write correctly from now now
May 19th, 2009 at 23:36
[...] Goals for Bloggers [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 18:52
[...] For more information about how web analytics can be useful for bloggers, check out Avinash Kaushik’s post on useful goals for blogs. [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 03:44
[...]
Ci sono ottimi blog in lingua inglese che forniscono informazioni sulle potenzialità di Analytics in un blog. Io vi consiglio il blog di Avinasg Kaushik.
[...]
June 11th, 2009 at 16:50
[...]
Geçen gün Avinash Kaushik’in blogundan okurken, “Blog Hedefleri ” başlıklı bir sayfaya rast geldim. Yazısında, 2006′da yazmaya başlarken, blogu için seçtiği üç hedefi belirtmiş.
Birinci hedefini Edwin Schlossberg’un bir sözü ile anlatmaya çalışıyor. “Yazı yazma vasfı diğer insanların düşünebileceği bir içerik çerçevesi oluşturmaktır”. Bu sözün tercümesi ile ilgili biraz yardım almaya çalıştım ama, yinede kendi tercümemi kullanmayı tercih ettim.
İkinci hedefi ise niteliksel. Her yazısına 6 yorum almayı hedeflemiş.
Üçüncü hedefi olarak Technorati.com web sitesinde derecesinin ilerlemesi olarak kendisine sayısal bir hedef seçmiş.
[...]
December 1st, 2009 at 12:32
Helpful post as I research blog goal-setting before starting one for our campus. Ours will have a regional focus and isn’t likely to draw hundreds of links from other sites, so I’m not holding my breath over our Technorati ranking :D.
One comment, though–number of comments per post is a quantitative measure, not qualitative. If you evaluated the content of the comments (this comment should count as positive :D), that would be qualitative.
If you’re using number of comments as a measure of engagement, that moves it toward the qualitative, but it’s still a numerical data point, to me. Or am I missing something?
@BarbChamberlain
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Washington State University Spokane
@WSUSpokane
http://www.spokane.wsu.edu
December 1st, 2009 at 13:16
Barb: Please see this post for a more nuanced take on how to measure success of a blog:
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/11/blog-metrics-six-recommendations-for-measuring-your-success.html
On to your question….
I 100% agree that it is a quantitative measure. I have not yet found a good enough sentiment analysis tool (see my latest post on that: http://tr.im/GdfB). I am sure that problem will go away with time, until then my mantra is: “all conversation is good conversation!”. :)
If you want to really get a peek into the qualitative try word clouds of the comment stream, it gives a nice, atleast first blush, grasp of what’s going on.
Avinash.
December 6th, 2009 at 05:51
[...]
I was also inspired by Avanish Kaushik post on ‘Blog Goals” and decided to write my first blog called Lets keep it Viral and not referring to H1N1 or maybe it is like H1N1 this blog does a comparison to H1N1 and the speed it took to spread around the world and how a viral marketing campaigns can have the same effective speed if it is done correctly.
[...]