Let me admit upfront. This isn't my idea at all.

I'm lifting it wholesale from Virginia Miracle of OgilvyPR who has a brands worthy of a weekend category.

Why?

Because I think it is a great litmus test for the value you are delivering.

It's a good one for you as a consumer and your relationship to brands...and the flip-side, for yourself as a brand. Are they/you worth the time?

If the answer is no, how do you stand out in a noise-filled marketplace?

On a micro-level is the brand of my friend, Jason, working on getting his story right.

On the macro-level, Microsoft, trying to get its CRM story right.

And everything in between.

As a "raving fan" or "true fan," where would you spend your time, voluntarily, helping the companies you love?

The question for those companies...how  do they find you, the proverbial needle in the haystack?

Part of the answer: they need to listen. This is one of the promises-and potentials-of social media. To facilitate the interaction and connection of like-minded individuals.

Some of mine are:

• E*Trade. I do everything on their site and wish they could do more
• Seth Godin. He's my marketing guru (here's my raving fan pic)
• Israel, definitely in need of re-branding.

• and possibly Metamucil, despite the ups and downs of our relationship. (ok, maybe I'd ask for free samples for this one, so not fair) and probably only because the raw entertainment value of thinking about the challenges of marketing/branding Metamucil!

Some of the folks I follow on twitter or whose blogs I read (see blog roll below right), but interesting how more and more, it's the people who are the brand (along the lines of this post)

And even more interesting...there aren't that many I can think of that are "worth a weekend."

So, which are your "worth a weekend brands"?

More than one person (Ben Gordon and Mike Fox, for starters) have asked the question of how I measure/track the blog.

Let me start by offering this...

RSS is the KEY
The single most important measure of blog success is "how many people have subscribed to your RSS/email feed?"

These are people who are giving you permission and attention to be a part of their lives. That's the best.

For RSS (here's my feed), I use www.feedburner.com It's got good tracking and a bunch of other options as well.

Next comes analyzing the pages...
When it comes to page views, I take reports with a grain of salt, so I tend to use multiple reports to "triangulate on the truth."

1. Google Analytics is certainly quite solid in this respect and gives you a lot of angles
2. I also use MyBlogLog (the free version is fine) to get both reports and insights into the types of people who are coming to the site (plus it's a nifty way to get introduced to new sites of similar interests)
3. I used to use SiteMeter, but felt that it was a bit redundant w/Google Analytics
4. And the platform I use, GraffitiCMS has built in reporting for most popular posts

Lastly, measuring activity
Comments are the key

I like to watch which posts (and what genre) generate the most comments from my "audience." This gives me an idea of where customer interest lies. Though, you need to be careful of the 1 percent rule.

If you are a popular blog/person, you can use TweetScan to monitor traffic about you. Pretty nifty.

And a word on Publicizing...

And as far as getting the word out goes..

1. link to my blog in all of my emails (you can use dynamic feed from Feedburner as well)
2. highlight on my LinkedIn profile
3. Use TwitterFeed to pull recent posts into Twitter, which then connects to Facebook, Skype, FriendFeed, Plaxo, and more...
4. send quarterly email to my network that highlight popular posts and ask for conversation/comments
5. comment on other people's blogs (see my blog roll on the right) and put my blog as the link
6. Of course, the best is to just write stuff that people want to read.. :-)

One of the blogs I read "Church of the Customer" had a contest and I won. See here.