I can’t believe it’s Week 9 already. Wow! I hope 10 was good enough for everyone. I sure enjoyed it. I’d like to say thank you to those that commented or simply read my musings. I wish number 11 (who ever that may be) all the best and look forward to reading your posts.

This being my last blog post, I started thinking about blogs: whether or not they work and are they a good investment for brands. Why does the IMC blog exist? Does it do a good job marketing the program? Is it a valuable feature for students in the program to stay connected and learn? I found a ClickZ article that ponders the question of the value of blogs and how to measure their impact.

Corporate blogs are popular these days. Google, Yahoo, General Motors and Sun Microsystems all have company blogs. Microsoft has official blogs and employee blogs. More and more smaller companies are starting to use the medium to raise their profile and some even hope it will generate sales. At my company we created and run a blog for our client Turkey Hill Dairy and it have generated a lot of interest.

How do you assess the impact of a brand blog? Do we even need to measure for results? Running a blog requires a minimal investment and the community it creates provides a lot qualitative feedback. If you do want a more definitive measurement there are several approaches available including monitoring trackbacks and comments or monitoring the news for certain keywords. There are several ways to do this. Google Alerts and Technorati offer free solutions. Software like Cymfony and New Media Strategies charge a fee to captures keyword mentions across all online media. But even free techniques require a time investment.

Of course you could measure tradition measures like unique users and hits, but they don’t tell the whole story. Another option is to apply qualitative benchmarking, like conducting brand attitude surveys, or implement a scoring system that rates every press comment or incoming link over an extended time period. Other marketers have used random pop up surveys asking for feedback. There really isn’t a standard and some marketers use a combination of these methods, but I many use none. Instead they are relying on a general sense of whether their blog is working or not.

What does everyone think? Are blogs worth the time and effort it takes to monitor them? What about this blog? Should we be measuring them?

Well, that’s enough seriousness. As a David Letterman fan I thought I would leave you with a Top Ten list ?

The Top Ten Things I learned While Writing the IMC Blog:

10. Time is relative. Nine weeks in class feels a lot slower than nine writing a blog.
9. There’s a difference between taking grad school seriously and being too serious about it.
8. The IMC virtual community is pretty darn real with a lot of real nice people.
7. This program is very convenient unless you’ve been inconveniently placed in a hotel with unreliable wireless! (That’s happening now!)
6. After 15 years of writing in an advertising style I can write academically.
5. Investigation is good, but leave room for instinct.
4. I can enjoy time with friends and family when I let myself be less than perfect.
3. Embracing my WVUness starts with a hat and grows with a basketball tournament.
2. The diverse backgrounds of the IMC students make enriching and insightful debates.

And the number one thing I learned while writing the IMC Blog,
1. No matter how big the hurdles you may face, never give up. Take it from a Philadelphia Eagles fan!

So I guess this is it. So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!