"How to measure the success of a blog"

I read Tomasz Tunguz's blog on LinkedIn about blog reach over the weekend. In his post, he discusses some shortcomings of blog analytics. in his post, he laments the unavailability of analytics tools that can segment readers into categories (such as entrepreneur or sales person, for example) and the content they viewed and whether it resonated or not. He goes on to point out that LinkedIn is best suited for such analytics as it manages personal information for all of its members and hosts the blogs themselves.

Of course I run analytics on this blog, but it doesn't really give me the depth of information Tunguz is talking about. Sure, I can see where readers came from, what they read, how long it took them to read it (or not), and whether they visited any other pages during their browse through my blog. To be able to get deeper information would mean to leverage information in provenance from various databases (variety), to analyse a potentially large volume of information (volume), and all being created and analyzed in near real time (velocity). Sounds a lot like big data, huh? Maybe for sites with a wider audience like on LinkedIn, GigaOm, or The Huffington Post.

As Tunguz says, such a tool for regular bloggers does not (yet?) exist. There would be a requirement for users to identify themselves--raising the potential for privacy concerns-- and the challenge of obtaining relevant information about their background to segment them though there are several social media tools that offer APIs that can help in that respect. We could also infer engagement by the amount of time the reader spends reading a blog and, at least for first time visitors, how many additional blog posts they read.

Interesting as it is, this level of analytics is not available to bloggers such as myself. If anyone is developing such a tool, sign me up for the alpha and beta tests. If one already exists, then this post is a moot point and please let me know the name of the tool.

Long Tail? Big Data!

By using Facebook "Likes", researchers at Cambridge University were able to build astonishingly accurate and detailed profiles of people ... from their politics, to emotional stability, to their parents' marital status. CBC.ca/TheCurrent

Three hours after I [Joel Stein] gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me. "We had it a couple of hours ago," he said. "I was just too busy to call." Time Magazine: "Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You"

We know more about you than you would care for us to know. Equifax CIO Dave Webb--CIO.com

Scary. The age of Big Data has begun, and we're only now starting to realize that our digital footprint is much more important than we know. The question is, how important is it, and to whom is it important. Privacy laws say they are important to us, but with every user agreement we accept without reading the terms and conditions, we are giving our personal information away, as a currency of sorts, in exchange for some "free" service. And someone, somewhere, is making money off of us.

This is the kind of stuff that advertisers and marketers drool over. Their holy grail, so to speak. To be able to target ads and specifically target customers to such a degree is crazy. Well, crazy to me, but perfect for advertisers and marketers because they can adress customer preference and customize the advertising/marketing so that the user experience is favorable. Ever see ads that are out of context? I once had an ad for bananas on my blog.. I have no idea how or why this happened to this day. Now imagine that the ad is for a new book by your favorite author. Or an upcoming movie, or education, or some other product or service that you are likely to buy based on your digital footprint.

We're talking long tail here and appealing to customer preferences. But, all of this makes me wonder:

• How well do targeted ads really do?
• Will users just keep spending on products that are being advertised to them specifically?
• What is the threshold? At what point do we stop buying and the ads become ineffective?
• Will we all go bankrupt because we buy everything that matches our preferences?

OK, maybe that last one is a bit nonsensical. At least I hope it is! But the questions remain. In their quest to maximise profits, are companies doing so at the expense of their customers? Well, yes because we're paying them because they offer a product or service that we really want. Rather, are we being duped to buy more than we need or outside of our normal buying habits by targeted advertising?

Maybe it's a question of being aware of what we need vs. what we want as consumers and knowing that advertising is increasingly targeted and customized.

Caveat emptor.