Exactly as with any other marketing scheme, when you produce a blog to advertise your business, you want to keep track of your results. This will let you see how effectively blogging is functioning for you and in addition to let you see what alterations you need to make to produce a more effective blog.

Stage One: Keep Track of Your Blogging Results

The first stage in determining how well your blog is functioning as a marketing tool is to measure your blog’s potency:

• Keep track of other blog references. A blogroll pertains to the practice of linking up with like-minded blog pages from one article. Just as you'll want to link to other blogs from your blog, so others might choose to offer a link to your blog. This kind of linking assures more hits and assures that your blog will strand higher in rankings - very much like a much-quoted web page will acquire high rankings in google.
• Keep track of all internet acknowledgments. You shouldn't just look at acknowledgments of your blog in other blogs. Keep track of where your company name and blog name appears online - in forums, web pages, and in publishings. What kind of publicity are you getting for your blog and your company? Has there been a different reaction to your business since you began the blog?
• Do some marketing research. Ask your clients where they heard of you and why they selected you. Ask your clients and readers to grade your blog. The answers may be very revealing.
• Count hits. Dependent on your blog software, you may be able to count how many people view your blog. This can be a crucial way to measure how many people you're reaching. If your bloging software has no function for counting traffic then check out Google Analytics.
• Place your blog in context. Look at your other marketing and advertising strategies. Liken the amount of time and money you spend on your marketing campaigns - and the results you get from each effort.

Stage Two: Make Your Results more beneficial

When you've looked at how your blog is impacting your business, you should be able to see what needs to be done. If your blog isn't acquiring enough hits, try promoting your blog more through online groups, emails, and links. If the response to your blog isn't great, then you may need to make some alterations in content and style to entice in more readers.

If you find that your blog isn't acquiring the results you want, though, be sure that you have given the blog a chance. Do realize that it takes longer to build a solid patriotic audience with a blog than with other forms of marketing. If you do build a steady audience, though, the promotional potential of your blog will be quite high.