This is a great video I really enjoyed listening to Katie Paine’s ideas. She really has a knack on how to measure social media. I found it really interesting that measurement is never from a direct line. She is requested to speak at conferences and then audience members remember her and ask for help with measuring social media effectiveness.

I also liked how she went about presenting the ideas to look at measurement. To me measurement is the hardest part of social media because it is still being developed. It is comforting to know that there are people like Katie Paine or the Forrester Research Company that are working hard to help social media advocates understand ways to effectively measure their site.

The truth is measurement is no longer simply who visited your site. So many factors help determine measurement, but return on investment is clearly here to stay. Our generation will need to understand it even more as we enter the workforce and prove to potential employers why they need social media.

It’s also really cool that Lindsey is dealing with this now at the Breeze. It goes to show us that we need to have all the facts and knowledge of social media to really convince others to use it.

Heather, I see your point about the difficulty of identifying goals for measurement of social media. In the video, Katie Paine was able to point out how measuring outcome can help a company determine if a social media application is benefiting their company. I think it’s more important for companies to take the time to show they care about their audience and have the technology available for relationships to be formed, then just focusing on analytic’s and metric’s measurement.

Measuring outcomes still sounds very complicated and possibly long-term, but I know companies are focused on outcomes and improving productivity. If people do not understand how to measure the effectiveness of social media or explain the importance of social media, companies will be hesitant in adopting the technologies. Most of the applications are free, so testing them out is worth a try for any company.

I’m currently trying to get social media tools up and running at The Breeze, where I work. I’ve set up a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and we already have the news online on our blog. However, I had to really prove to my managers why social media use is so important in marketing our product. I’d like to try out some of Katie Paine’s tactics to measure the worth of a blog and other social media tools. If I could prove the ROI of these tools I think my managers would be fully supportive of me taking the time and effort to use them.