Business Blog ROI

Katie Paine has conceded a point to Shel Israel: As cheap as they are to set up and maintain, there's really no need to measure the ROI of blogs.

Ed's note: How important is ROI when it comes to an active blog? Considering the lack of total costs, is this something that even needs to be measured? Share your thoughts at iEntry's newest forum, SyndicationPro.

After all, is it necessary to measure the ROI of your pants? (Shel denies he ever used this analog, but Katie remembers it.) There's much to be said of this argument. If a company installs the open-source Wordpress on its own servers, the cost is limited to bandwidth. For $14 a month, a company can have the top-tier Typepad service without concern for bandwidth use. When measured against cost, it doesn't take much to justify. One minor positive outcome can tip the scales and rationalize the cost of the blog.

It's even easy to extend the "pants" argument to higher costs, as Toby Ward does when discussing intranet ROI. Intranets, obviously, cost more than blogs, but Toby has asked if companies demand ROI justification for their telephone networks? Not even the bean counters insist on a tally of the ROI for phones because everyone knows the consequences of removing them.

Read the Full Article and discuss it at SyndicationPro