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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Del.icio.us bookmarks as measurement?

Measuring a blog’s impact is a dicey exercise and one that prompts a fair amount of discussion. People seem to be commenting on blog posts less these days, partly because Twitter has assumed a bigger role in these conversations and partly, I suspect, because people just aren’t as interested in commenting.

Some people have suggested that trackbacks are a better solution (as in this post), but I don’t think so. Jeremy Zawodny prounced trackbacks dead back in mid 2005, citing several others who felt the same way. Spam contributed heavily to the death of trackbacks, but there were other contributing factors. You have to be really geeky just to understand what a trackback is and how it works, and you can’t be at all lazy to use them. Most people just won’t make the effort to paste a trackback URL from a blog post into the trackback field in their own blog. And, of course, only people with blogs can use them, so readers of your post who don’t have blogs can’t use trackbacks to record their interest.

So, how to determine which of your posts were most interesting to your readers?

I wrote a post yesterday about GMnext, which I thought would generate some discussion. I got only one comment. However, I noticed that it was bookmarked to del.icio.us eight times.

Could that be a measurement tool, the number of times your piece is saved to del.icio.us? It’s not valid statistical measurement by any stretch of the imagination, but if you were using trackbacks and comments before to get an idea of your post’s popularity, why not del.icio.us now?

I threw the question out to my Twitter followers, and got a few replies, most suggesting that they watch del.icio.us bookmarks but more for other reasons than measurement, although Maggie Fox says she does. Nathan Gilliatt noted that he’d like to but hasn’t found an easy way to do it. My approach is through FeedBurner FeedFlares, which automatically records when anybody clicks on the “Add to del.icio.us” link and adds the bookmark.

Eight saves suggests to me that this post had some pretty good uptake, even if commenting was anemic. What do you think?

01/04/08 | 6 Comments | Del.icio.us bookmarks as measurement?

Comments

  • 1.Shel, I think that the number of times a post is bookmarks is certainly a measurement -- though it probably shouldn't be THE measurement -- that can be used to consider the popularity of a post. In fact, it's something I hadn't really thought of before -- thank you for raising it!

    I actually clicked to save the post to del.icio.us from directly within Google Reader. Now it's been bookmarked nine times!

    Bryan Person, The Bryper Blog | January 2008 | Boston

  • 2.Shel, this is an area my company is working on because *everyone* - from tech-savvy marketers like you and me through to 'normal people' client side don't know how to measure the here and now of online media. It's a badly served area, complex, fast-moving, you know - the usual challenges we face!

    What I wanted to say was relate my own experiences as a consumer of online media and say that different content produces different results in my behaviour.

    For example:

    I only bookmark in delicious useful reference material or stuff I want to share (using the for: function in delicious) with my contacts.

    I only comment when I feel that I have something useful to add, or am moved strongly enough by the debate that has ensued.

    I only subscribe to RSS when I find content from an author I think may produce a further stream of useful content for me.

    In summary, some of the very best content I have ever read I have only ever bookmarked. What am I gonna comment? 'Gee whizz, you blew my socks off Mr Godin - wow, please let me wash your wrinkly toes or clean your car'?. But I may both bookmark and sub to RSS.

    And I have commented on threads but not stored, shared or subscribed to that content then or for the future.

    As such, Bryan is right - bookmarks is one measure, but it ain't *the* measure.

    Lastly, like you sometimes I write a 'great' piece that goes nowhere and then a different half-baked germ of a post becomes the most commented and interest debate on my blog ever. Hard to predict, eh?

    Interesting times though! Keep up the great work - Will McInnes.

    PS. If you'd be interested in beta testing our measurement product (it's aimed specifically at PR professionals, but not yet prototyped) then I'd be delighted to include your noble self.

    Will McInnes | January 2008 | United Kingdom

  • 3.Bryan & Will: Thanks for your comments. I absolutely agree: I don't think ANY measure for ANY communication effort should ever be the sole measure.

    Will, I'm always up for trying a new product (and especially a measurement tool). Sign me up!

    Shel Holtz | January 2008 | Concord, CA

  • 4.Hey Shel, our attitude is, if we can measure something, we will. Del.ico.us, trackbacks, referring sites, comments:traffic, diggs, feed subscriptions, you name it - our ultimate objective being a metric that we can tease meaning out of. Hardly a science at this point, of course, but every time we develop and measure something, we learn a little more...

    maggie fox | January 2008 | toronto

  • 5.I agree with Maggie, I think it depends on the goal. I think Del.ico.us and Digg are certainly one measure, of how important a specific posting might be, but is that really the purpose of the blog? Or is it to get more clients, sell more stuff, enhance the reputation? If its the latter you should be measuring those things -- click thrus, referrals, sales, relationships..

    Katie Delahaye Paine | January 2008 | Berlin, NH

  • 6.I certainly agree, Kami and Katie. IABC's standard approach to strategic planning includes objectives and measurements that assess how well the objectives have been met, a notion to which I have subscribed for, well, decades.

    My question about del.icio.us is whether it's a useful measurement of anything. It's certainly not statistically valid, but if 20 people bookmark your post, is it a measure of the post's popularity? It also represents an injection into the social media space as it becomes discoverable in searches using the same tags with which people have bookmarked the page.

    And it seems this is something you agree with!

    Shel Holtz | January 2008 | Concord, CA

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