Over the last year (or three), how much time have you spent Linking In, Tweeting, Facebooking, Blogging, and using other social tools?  If you are like most, getting a return on your time investment probably has crossed your mind:  Is all this time actually paying off?  Is it worth the effort?

To answer this question, many people rely on the argument of the phone: why should Social Media – a necessary tool – be held to a higher standard than the telephone?  Since the phone isn’t justified, why should Social Media be?

This is an argument of laziness: the telephone is absolutely justified by how people use it, and the results that accrue from that use.  In fact, there are many metrics for the phone:  Number of inbound calls, wait times, customer inquiries, sales volume, travel dollars saved, etc.  Social Media measurement is even more measurable.  Consider these possibilities:

• Volume: The number of fans/followers/subscribers/connections; the number of views/comments/trackbacks on any videos/blog posts, and Retweets on Twitter.
• Sentiment: Whether the discussion/comments about your organization, brands, and senior leaders are trending positive or trending negative.
• Topics/Issues: Tracking the context of the conversation: whether the topics where the organization is referred to matches the target topics.
• Source: Source refers to finding where the conversation is taking place.
• Authors (influencers): Determining who the thought leaders (or in some cases, the ringleaders) are will allow the organization to directly influence the conversation.
• Traffic: The use of Google Analytics to keep track of standard web metrics:  page views, time on site, click-through-rate, etc.
• Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube analytics:  To use the varied stats from within the Social Media sites to determine user interests.
• Number of job or volunteer candidates.
• Media Mentions:  The number of real-world media comments based on Social Media postings.

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