ROI for blogging

I just read some more blog commentary on the ROI of blogging. This suggested a few points to me:

• Rate Of Return (ROI) is a ratio or percentage, not a dollar amount. It's not proper to say "the ROI was $1 million".
• It's not enough to state the dollar value that resulted from your blogging, but you must also be honest about the cost of doing the blogging.
• You also need to be congizant of the lost opportunity cost of your blogging. What other activities might you have engaged in when you were blogging? Might you have made a few phone calls or sent a few directed emails which might have resulted in some big deals and significant revenue? Maybe or maybe not, but be clear about it.
• Stated another way, your time has value, so be sure to include an appropriate valuation of your time in any ROI calculation.
• It is better to focus on the business value to your organization of your blogging. What are the various ways that your organization values activities and time?
• Your blog may have an indirect value rather than a direct financial return. That's true for many non-blogging activities as well.
• Your blog may have a deferred value, so it is important to know what period of time will be used to calculate ROI. Some organizations have only very short time horizons for returns, while others support and maybe even encourage longer-range thinking and returns.

-- Jack Krupansky