It’s clear social media is here to stay, and furthermore that it’s a viable way to reach out to your customers and increase your sales. However, it’s also clear that social media requires the devotion of what can cost the most from a business owner’s perspective: time.

It’s important to remember that your social media efforts will take time to make a substantial splash in the market pool in which you’re hoping to find new customers – think of it as jumping into a pool … in slow motion. Your splash will be seen, heard, and felt by the market … if you give it time.

It’s not very realistic to expect a giant swarm of traffic a few days after you post your first blog entry. Instead, consider monitoring the statistics surrounding your blog so you can spend more time focusing on where visitors are emerging. For example, if you see a lot of people finding your site on Google, consider optimizing your posts and pages to maximize the potential of being found through Google and other search engines.

To start gauging the progress of your new blog, consider looking into the following stats:

Visitors

Look into the amount of people actually visiting your blog. There are two areas of interest here – the number of general visits and the number of absolute unique visitors. The difference between the two is that general visitors counts visits total, whereas absolute unique visitors is a reflection of how many people visited your site – one person equals one visit … even if they visit 20 times throughout the day.

Absolute Unique Visitors

This number is important if you plan on advertising later – the higher the amount of visitors, the more attractive your blog is to advertisers. Advertisers will often ask for you absolute unique visitors for the month and…

Pageviews

These are pretty straight forward – if a person visits the front page, the about page, and then the contact page of your blog, you’ll have acquired three page views from that visitor. The pageview count is often higher than the visits and absolute visitor count.

Traffic

This is obviously what you’re hoping to improve – again, the more traffic you receive the higher the absolute unique visitors and pageviews you’ll be able to present to potential advertisers. This general number can also be broken down into direct traffic, referring sites, and traffic from search engines.

• Direct traffic occurs when people type your url into their address bar ( www.Dapeem.com for example)
• Referred traffic occurs when visitors come from other sites.
• Search Engine traffic occurs when people search for keywords (including your site name) and discover your site.

Traffic Sources

This is an important aspect of your metrics – it tells you where your visitors are coming from. For example, if you bookmark an article to Reddit.com, chances are people will find your article and follow your link to your blog. Other sources of traffic might include the following:

• Google
• Direct
• Twitter
• And sites linking to you

Keywords

The keywords section of your metrics is perhaps one of the most informational. It tells you what keywords were used to find your website. Not only does this tell you how people are finding you, but it also tells you where they’re coming from, what they’re interested in, and what you might be able to write about in the future.

Goals

Goals are really what you should focus on if you ever plan to make money from your time blogging. As mentioned, blogging requires the devotion of time, and it takes time for blogs to find their audience – to start monitoring how well your blog funnels your readers toward a sale, membership, or newsletter, you need to set goals for your blog, which are basically the pages your readers land on after completing a goal.

Goals can consist of signing up for a membership, joining the email list, purchasing something, leaving a comment, or what ever else you might want. Tracking your goals will inform you how viable your blog is regarding your goals and how to increase the numbers.

Blogging for business isn’t for everyone. If you’re planning on getting involved in the blogosphere, consider the fact that it takes time, time, and more time. if you feel blogging might not be the best way for you to market your business, consider these Free Alternatives to Advertise Your Business.

You might also like these posts:

• 38 Ways to Find Customers
• 4 Ways Beginners Can Reach Out to Customers
• 5 Easy Ways to Increase Business during the Economic Recession in 2009
• 7 Tips for Successful Meetings with Potential Clients
• ABCs of Starting a Blog for Your Business