What's your CI?
Stowe Boyd over at /Message has coined a new metric that I think micro-ISVs would benefit by adopting: the Conversational Index. Start with your micro-ISV's blog (you do have a blog, right?). Tally up you posts, divide by the sum of comments plus trackbacks (posts/comments+trackbacks): That's your CI.
A CI of < 1.0 tells you your prospective customers are not just passively listening to you, but care enough about what you say to say something back. A CI of say >4.0 means you need a major change in direction because no one is interested in what you say enough to comment or post about it.
Now, Don Dodge calculates CI a little differently, but the point is the same: your blog to be effective needs to be a conversation, not a monologue. And, this metric needs to take into account RSS, but I expect as more data becomes available, how CI is defined will be tweaked to take RSS into account.
My CI? 1.62. Good, but definitely has room for improvement. So what should I be writing more of, or less about? And while you're at it, what's your CI?
Doesn't rating interest based on trackbacks mean that all your prospective customers are therefore bloggers? It seems that you could potentially have high interest from people (based on site traffic) without high trackback numbers. Just a thought.
Posted by: Kris | February 05, 2006 at 07:51 AM