Social media is a scalable way to create a personal relationship with your customers and consumers, it allows you to be where all the conversations are happening, and if you do it well and with the right amount of diligence, you will win (provided that your customers are participating in the aforementioned channels). Because all of this is happening over the ‘net, and online efforts have always been considered more measurable than their offline counterparts, social media measurement and ROI have become a million dollar question. On the one hand, social media is all about engagement and long term relationship building efforts. On the other hand, brands hunger for numbers, results that are immediately measurable, campaign-based ROI. Monitoring, measurement and ROI have so much mindshare for all of us marketers, that web monitoring and measurement companies like Radian6, Biz360 and Scout Labs (as well as web analytics giants Google Analytics and Omniture) will continue to win in the coming years.

Whether you track short-term social media tactical efforts (I hate the word campaign as applied to social media, so I refuse to use it), or longer term community building efforts, you should be tracking, evaluating, course-correcting and iterating. Not convinced that you should be measuring? To illustrate how important measurement is, and what a vast ocean of data points exists out there, I found this great social media counter created by Gary Hayes. We all know statistics can be stated to prove whatever thesis you have, but the true magnitude of these numbers is truly astounding. It’s dynamically updated, and you can toggle between various time intervals. Enjoy!