It’s easy to start a blog. Just ask authors of the 90 million blogs Technorati is tracking. However, it’s not so easy to be successful. For that, just ask the top 200 bloggers out of those 90+ million blogs. But what is success? Especially for a business blog?

As the primary author of one of those top 200 blogs (Online Marketing Blog) that has also been highly recognized by publications such as Advertising Age (AdAge Power150 #3) and well respected PR industry blogs such as in Edelman’s Social Media Index #13, I’ve found some of the measurable outcomes from business blogging include:

• Use of brand names in text, in links
• Number of comments
• Number of subscribers via RSS and RSS to email
• Media attention
• Speaking requests
• Customer loyalty
• Inbound links to the blog
• Search engine ranking for the corporate site
• Corporate website traffic
• Leads/sales initiated
• Volume of blog traffic
• Technorati and other credible rankings
• Search engine ranking for the blog
• Increased company visibility within the industry
• Increased media coverage
• Improved customer loyalty
• Increased sales leads/revenue/new customers