The weakness of it is can’t really measure ‘engagement’, I’d really like to have some way of counting average number of comments per post, and average number of posts per month as well, and cross-reference current month to past months to try to detect trends, to find when a blog is going ‘off’ and then start decreasing its ranking. I’m currently looking at Postrank for this.

I often find that often if I try and cover all the bases in a post and try and be authoritative I get much less in the way of comments and conversation. Some of it has to come down to voice, some blog posts sound more conversational and more open. Not sure if that comes with practice or some people have a more conversational editorial style.

@Toby totally agree about Seth, he still has a very high engagement score, but I still find it fascinating that he has an unassailable position from the standpoint of popularity, and this metric is the only one that has moved him from that top spot. I don’t think it means a great deal, but it does indicate that this is a very different metric that is being used here, and I think that’s exciting.

to valeria’s point, i also notice an increase in comments when posts are either more personal or the ‘information’ is wrapped around a story. interesting that although seth does not have comments turned on his engagement score is the 2nd highest ranked.

I think you’re onto something with popularity and drop in engagement. We used to have more conversations at my place, now if there are more than a couple of comments it’s a lucky day! However, I noticed that many of the engaging posts were not business proper, they were a bit more personal and off the cuffs. So of course those would get a higher engagement level. But are those posts more useful to individuals? Probably not, I’m not *that* interesting. I’d venture that actionable business information would have greater value.

And here’s the thing, what if people who get value form it do not link or do not have blogs? What then? How do you measure that? What’s your take?