The Conversational Index
I was having an email discussion this evening with a fellow writer who was concerned that his post to comment ratio seemed pretty low. My colleague Jeff Risley brought up the Conversational Index as a way to determine whether or not a sufficient level of discussion was being generated around this writer’s thoughts.
For those of you not familiar with the Conversational Index, the equation is very simple. Take a look at your blog’s stats and determine the number of posts you have, your trackbacks, and the number of comments you have. Then, apply the following equation:
(trackbacks+comments)/posts
Any number over 1 is considered good because that means there’s more user contribution than author posting. My colleague’s Conversational Index was 2.42, pretty good for a blog that has existed for less than a year and is on a corporate intranet (therefore receiving 0 trackbacks). His worries were for naught. There’s plenty of conversation happening, it’s just happening among the same 5 people. 
So, how does the CI for this site compare?
(102+315)/312 = 1.33
Not bad for a three year old site, but still not as high as I’d like. I know the readership is there… I look at my stats every day. There’s just a lot of passive readership. Which I imagine is normal, I just haven’t found any data that shows what a normal active/passive readership ratio is.
So, c’mon, join the discussion (if you haven’t lately)! I promise I’ll work on writing more things worth discussing.
[tags]blogging, conversation, trackbacks, readership[/tags]