Jim Sterne, who has written many books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service, tackled the complex world of social media metrics a while back in his book titled Social Media Metrics (http://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Metrics-Marketing-Investment/dp/0470583789). He has one of the first books on this subject, and he breaks the process down into nine steps which I like, as follows:
Get focused and identify goals: Social media is the realm of public opinion and customer conversations. If you don't have a clear idea of why you are there, anything you measure will be useless. He suggests you begin with the big three business objectives of higher revenue, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction.
Get attention and reach your audience: Measuring message delivery in social media is a lot like measuring it in classic advertising, so classic metrics apply. With social media, it is also important to identify how...