Forrester on Blogging ROI

Forrester is taking a closer look at the real ROI of blogging: The "Why" and "How" of External Blogging Accountability. People ask me all the time whether blogging helps my business and can I measure it? Frankly, that's not why I blog. I blog because I love to write and am incredibly inquisitive about everything - okay, nearly everything.

An excerpt from the report written by Charlene Li and Chloe Stromberg:
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.

The report covers the following:
1: Look At Three Factors To Calculate The ROI Of Blogging
2: Quantify And Assign Value To The Key Benefits Of Blogging
3: Estimate The Costs Of Blogging
4: Blogging ROI Should Also Be Risk-Adjusted For Different Scenarios

Source: Forrester Research, grabbed from MicroPersuasion

Writes Steve Rubel who shares his thoughts about participating and the end-results, "In Forrester’s interviews, the most frequently mentioned benefits of corporate blogging were: greater brand visibility in mainstream media on the Web, word of mouth, improved brand perception, instantaneous consumer feedback, increased sales efficiency and fewer "customer service-driven PR blowups."

And on a model for assessing blog risk: a) identify the three things that could happen, b) model the scenario and c) estimate its probability. He notes and I can't agree more: "this is very similar to preparing for a crisis in PR and good advice when venturing into a blog program."