Jenna Lebel penned a fantastic article on Likeable.com that discusses how to get started with measuring social media. It is spot on! The first thing you must always do is understand what you hope to achieve. In this case, you need to ask yourself, why are we using social media, and why does that matter? Is it to generate sales opportunities, build relationships, create brand awareness, provide customer support, or something else? This is so important, as each of these goals may translate into a different set of metrics.

Now, as you go about your measurement and management of social media, you might be focusing on one particular area, such as lead generation, and realize you are also gaining in another area, say customer service. So, it is okay to update your goals AND metrics as you go along. An ROI strategy should not be without some elasticity.

I’m doing a number of presentations over the next several months looking at the next step of ROI. The step that comes after you have identified your goals… How to convert those goals into some sort of metric, report and dashboard. I will share that information hear soon! In the mean time, start documenting your goals!