Let’s start with a quote from the Forrester report (via Charlene Li’s post about it):

Many large companies stand on the brink of blogging, yet they are unwilling to take the plunge. Others, having dove in early, now face the challenge of managing existing blogs without the ability to show that they effectively support business goals. While blogging’s value can’t be measured precisely, marketers will find that calculating the ROI is easier than it looks. Following a three-step process, marketers can create a concrete picture of the key benefits, costs, and risks that blogging presents and understand how they are likely to impact business goals. This, in turn, enables marketers to answer the key questions, such as whether to blog or not to blog, or to make smart choices about an existing blog.

We work with a lot of businesses here at OBO.  Lot’s of them come to us with the "my boss told me I need a blog" or "I’ve heard a blog can help me".  Now, often in the process of working with potential and existing clients we get the "So, what’s the ROI of blogging … " question.  Yeah this has been one that’s been tough to quantify for a while.  Where do you start?  The value of a comment?  Value of a link or mention?  Lower cost of customer acquisition?  Connecting blogging to sales?

It’s all of these and more.  Unlike "traditional" websites, a blog offers so many different inputs into the system that good models have taken a while to create.  Looks like the model has been created and it makes good logical sense to me.

Steve Rubel points to a new Forrester publication detailing their new model.  Of course being Forrester, you have to pay to get these pearls of wisdom (just why are pearls so wise any way?).  Luckly both Steve and the lead author on the reports, Charlene Li, included one of the figures from the report for us to get an idea of what goes into the model.

This looks pretty straightforward.  The right inputs are there.  Each company has to put a dollar figure on the inputs, of course.  You don’t have to wonder about real-world applications, Forrester applied their new model to the GM Fast Lane blog.  In her post about the new reports Charlene highlights one goal GM had was to get more input from customers.  So, comments were linked to the cost of running focus-groups.  Good match, and it looks like there is a six-figure savings there.  Not too shabby.

Barring all of us buying the report, which I know Forrester would love, how can we start applying what is publicly available to our blogs.  It seems simple to me.  First define you blog’s goals.  What are you after.  Then set a value to the goals.  Then find a metric to match.

Easier than it sounds, of course, but I think we’re a lot further along now than we’ve been in a while.

I suspect there is going to be a lot of "well, duh!" comments about this report.  Most of us in blog consulting already know about the benefits and potential ROI (or ROB … return on blog).  The kicker is that no matter how many times we tell people, until there is a group like Forrester who creates a model and gives it legitimacy, many business remain gun shy.  It’s just a fact of life we all accept.  The "big thinkers" have to give it their stamp of approval before it will take hold/take off.

Now we’ve got our model, now let’s get more companies into social media!

Tags: Forrester, Charlene Li, blog roi, ROI

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