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Social media measurement sounds like an inherently good idea. Management likes numbers, and if we can measure it, we can manage it. So all this new online activity should be easier to understand, once we measure it. There's only one problem: What does social media measurement mean? Like social media itself, it is an evolving term with multiple definitions based on the needs of different constituencies.

Social media's implications for business cross functional lines, and a successful social media strategy embraces a multidisciplinary approach. Social media measurement sounds like a generally descriptive term, but to specialists, it suggests specific meanings, which vary according to the background and job role of the specialist. If you want to know which type of measurement applies to your needs, you first need to know what questions you want to answer.

I've seen four basic ways to measure social media. The first two are geared toward managing a company's online presence and content—its speaking activities. The other two focus on understanding what others are saying about the company, which we can describe as listening to social media. As companies engage with customers and others through social media, all of these approaches are useful, and it's important to know when and why to use each.

Measuring online audiences
One approach comes directly from existing web measurement practices, where the focus is on measuring the size of online audiences. One of the benefits of this method is that it provides reliable audience data for pricing, buying, selling and evaluating online advertising. For example, advertising priced on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis relies on the availability and accuracy of audience data. Questions answered by this method include "How many people see our ads on social media sites?" and "What can we know about the people who see our ads?" Whether you're buying or selling advertising, this is your kind of measurement.

The advertising-driven approach uses the language of web analytics, and it inherits some analytics issues, such as the need to standardize terminology and methodology. The new challenge is in measuring social media sites that don't work like earlier web sites. For example, visitor actions on many sites cause parts of the page to load, rather than whole pages, which undermines page view metrics and leads to ideas for metrics like time spent—literally, an attempt to measure the time a person spends interacting with a web site. How to measure online audiences for advertising purposes is an ongoing topic, and many of the most prominent current discussions are focused on this aspect of social media measurement.

Tracking social media content
Another challenge for the web analytics camp is measuring the performance of a company's online content as it moves off corporate servers and onto third-party services. Think of online video from YouTube and branded Web 2.0 widgets that can be embedded in any web page. The goal is still audience measurement: Who is interacting with our content? The challenge is to measure audience activity in diverse online venues not managed by the original company.

Web analytics has focused on advertising and the management of a company's web sites. From brand-building and online commerce to direct-response online advertising, metrics like clicks, conversion rate and engagement are all about understanding the behavior of web visitors and optimizing the company's performance. Social media expand the analytics mission, but the focus remains on measuring online activity.

Listening to social media
Listening to social media, on the other hand, is about monitoring and measuring what people say. Audience metrics figure into some calculations, but most of these metrics come from the world of media analysis, with its focus on voices outside the company. This type of measurement comes from traditional media analysis companies expanding into social media and from a growing new category of specialist firms in social media analysis.

Much of the attention to social media analysis goes to monitoring activities, which provide the day-to-day answer to a clients' usual first question: What are people saying about us online? Measurement in this context adds analytical depth to the basic news clipping activity, providing insights into trends and identifying influential voices.

This type of measurement combines traditional media analysis metrics, such as message volume, tone and share of voice, with audience metrics, influencer analysis and speaker profiling to provide useful insights into the vastly expanded online media universe. Definitions, however, are unsettled, so it's important to understand what your social media analysis vendor offers and its limitations. You'll also need to decide on the trade-offs between human and automated analysis.

Communicators can use this type of social media measurement to identify outreach targets, emerging issues and opportunities for communication. For example, influencer analysis may identify a blogger who is frequently referenced by other bloggers or reporters on a topic, so that the original blogger's thoughts reach beyond his own audience. A company could choose to engage in conversation with that blogger, being careful to observe the cultural norms surrounding blogger outreach. Ongoing trend analysis, to take another example, can identify emerging issues reflected in changing topics and sentiment in discussions around a company's brands. Early discovery may allow companies to avoid crisis situations by creating an opportunity to address issues before they become highly visible.

Social media analysis tools are also useful for measuring the effectiveness of marketing efforts, such as tracking message penetration following a product launch or gauging the results of outreach programs. Measurement can inform decisions on how to respond appropriately to messages in social media. While the initial need may be defensive monitoring for negative messages, don't miss the opportunity to identify brand advocates using the same methods.

Market research
In addition to routine monitoring and measuring, social media provide an opportunity for online ethnographic research methods, based on the unprompted opinions of the large and growing population of active Internet users. It's the world's largest focus group, where companies can explore opinions, needs and ideas. This is the home of observation and analysis, not standard metrics, although topic identification, sentiment and influence analysis are typical. The research establishment will point out issues such as selection bias, but easy access to unprompted opinions provides value in a world of diminishing survey responses.

This type of research feeds back into the other specialties I mentioned—advertising, interactive marketing and PR—but the insights are more strategic than the routine metrics that dominate the measurement discussion. What you learn from this type of research may be as valuable to product and brand teams as to communicators.

The right tool for the job
The first step toward successful social media measurement is knowing what you're trying to accomplish. Are you buying or selling advertising? Trying to influence customers? Selling products online? Tracking opinion and message penetration? Or are you ready to learn from the massive pool of online opinion? Once you establish your questions, you can choose the tools and services that answer them.

If your focus is on listening to social media—the media analysis approach to social media measurement—be prepared for an evolving market. The definitions of important terms aren't quite settled, among them influence, authority and sentiment. So for now, we have qualitative measures and intuitive definitions that vary by vendor. They can be useful, but they're not yet standardized.

Traffic at the intersection of social media and business is going to be interesting for a while. That's why I spend so much time there.