Determining Blog and Discussion Popularity

I recently read a Blog Post by Amy Dean of Keyword Communication titled Six Ways to Ignite a LinkedIn Discussion which hit the mark.

What inspired this post was the discussion occurring in the comments section posted by Eric Goldman of Gossmar Inbound Marketing and Amy regarding the importance of targeting your discussion to your audience, and using the number of comments your discussion or blog post receives as an indication of the perceived interest within the social community.

That got me thinking about some old statistics I had seen regarding the percentage of members of the Social Networking community that actually observed versus contributed . A quick search of my book marks failed to discover the site which held this information but using the powers of Social Networking and asking a question on Linkedin provided the information I knew existed within minutes.

The 90:9:1 Theory

Long time Web Usability expert Jacob Nielsen wrote about the Community Participation Inequality back in 2006. I admit that these statistics are somewhat outdated but I do believe human nature does not change in a hurry and therefore, although there may be some changes recently this information is still relevant.

Jacob Nielsen states:

User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
• 9% of users contribute from time to time.
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

Do comments count?

Absolutely! Social Networks and Social Media are all about interaction and communication, so of course the number and quality of comments a discussion or blog post receive are indicative of how well received the discussion or blog post is. However, when considering the 90:9:1 theory it is of course obvious that comments cannot be the only metric to judge popularity and successful targeting.

Multiple competing factors

It's quite clear that many discussion and blog post readers are essentially consumers. Think of your own habits, I know personally I read much more than I comment on and the primary reason for this in my case is lack of time. All of us have work, family and recreational time requirements which are all competing for our attention, so when it comes to even that 2 or 3 minutes to leave a comment, it just might be too much due to so many other things competing for our attention.

Measuring Popularity

In addition to considering the volume of discussion and Blog comments there are a couple of other metrics we can review to provide an indication of how popular any give discussion or Blog Post has been.

1. Social Sharing:

The number of Tweets, Facebook and Buzz shares does provide an indication of popularity. There are a couple of ways to determine this information. First of course are the retweet and share buttons on your own Blog or otherwise, I have lately become a fan of Ubervu which not only provides you with information about how often your Blog Posts shared on networks such as Twitter and Facebook, but also who has done the sharing.

2. Google Analytics

From what I have seen the majority of discussions on Linkedin are linked to a Blog Post therefore, a quick review of page visits and bounce rates within your Google Analytic account provides an indication of the discussions popularity.

It's all only indicative

Of course all this data is only and indication of how well your discussion or Blog post has hit the target. The 90:9:1 theory and other factors competing for your targeted audience attention must also be factored in. However, when you start to monitor this information, trends become apparent and given time you will begin to understand which discussions and Blog Posts are hitting the mark and which are not.