By now, you probably know that you always need to be measuring the success of your business. You need to know if you’re on the right track or not. People will give you a million and one metrics you should be measuring. Those metrics are important, don’t get me wrong, but if you just keep track of one – this should be the one.

And here it is: are your clients (or customers or readers or whatever the case may be) going out on a limb for you?

Here’s what I mean by that:

• Are they referring new business your way?
• Are they passing on your information to others (without being asked to)?
• Are they willing to give you testimonials?
• Are you mainly working off of referrals, or blind contacts?
• Are they saying good things about you without being prompted to do so?

Tracking this one metric will tell you straight-up whether or not your business is succeeding. See, if your clients are doing all of those things mentioned above, it means they know, like, and trust you. And if someone knows, likes, and trusts you – they’ll evangelize on your behalf until the cows come home (which makes your job a lot easier).

So how do you go about measuring this?

• Keep track of referrals. I simply do this by asking each person who contacts me how they found out about me, and logging that information into a Google Doc. Easy enough.
• Set up Google Alerts for your name, your business name, your product names, etc. Keep tabs on what people are saying about you. You’ll know immediately if you’re doing something right, or if you’re doing something wrong.
• Keep track of what people are saying about you on social media. Frequently search for yourself. Keep tabs on the conversation.