The secret to measuring the success of your online content publishing efforts through a blog, Twitter, video, podcasts, and so on is simple.  There is no secret.  At least no one has figured it out yet.So where does that leave Authoritative Content publishers?  How can you measure the success of your efforts?  Authoritative Content publishers invest a lot of time and sweat equity into creating meaningful and useful content.  How do you know your efforts are paying off?I think Joe Pulizzi, founder and chief content officer at Junta42, summed up the evolving secret to measuring Authoritative Content success quite well in a recent interview with B-to-B Magazine.  When asked how the measurement of custom media (such as Authoritative Content) differs from traditional media spending, Joe said:

The biggest difference is that every custom program is measured differently, which is also the problem. There are no silver bullets to custom media measurement. It all starts with your marketing objectives. Once you know that, use whatever tools necessary—readership studies, transaction reports, online behavior—to develop what I call an “ROO” or return on objective. The ROO is the custom media measurement plan based on the specific marketing objectives you have for the plan.

So there you have it.  Determine your objectives for your content publishing efforts and measure your success against your path to reaching those objectives.  So many of the benefits of being an Authoritative Content publisher are intangible that it can be difficult to get lost in trying to track elusive statistics and nail down specific metrics.  Each Authoritative Content publisher has his or her own goals for publishing amazing content online.  Measuring ROO sounds like a logical solution.