I have to admit, even I am getting tired of thinking, writing and using social media. Everywhere you turn everyone is talking about how they use it, how many followers on twitter they have, how many people have joined their facebook group pages, how many people clicked on their blog…

I like marketing author Jim Sterne’s two cents, “Whoop-dee-doo.” Well said Jim.

Jim was quoted in an article in Marketing Magazine called “The Numbers Game“. Most of the numbers that people quote ‘are great for chest-beating and nothing else’.

So how do we measure the effects of social media?

Recently Mark, my part time partner of Idea Design asked me “Seriously, how much new business have we gotten as a result of all this work you are doing (using social media).”

And I don’t know. I’m not sure I even care. For me it’s about establishing new relationships with colleagues in our sector, or sharing some of the great content that I stumble upon from and with my network, or blogging about what I do and what I think because it forces me to think about what I do and what I think and reflect on that. For me, it’s about being a leader in my chosen profession and having people look to me as a leader.

And if I get new work as a result of this work then I’m thrilled. And to answer Mark’s question, I don’t think I have won a lot of new work directly but indirectly I have met people via social media (hello Laurie Pringle!) and I have been offered new work through those contacts…

So back to the question – how do you measure this social media thing?

The article quotes analytics evangelist for Google, Avinash Kaushik who says that the over used word of ‘engagement’ is not a metric. “Engagement no longer means anything to anyone because it means everything to everyone.” Instead he thinks in terms of amplification.

Kaushik states what matters is what happens to your message after you post it. He charts the performance of his own twitter account by measuring the number of retweets he generates, and breaks it down further by calculating the number of retweets per thousand followers (he has over 7,000 followers and boasts a retweek-per-thousand rate of 7.86).

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again. This stuff can be analyzed to death.

What you, the charity, should be thinking about is relationship building and producing content that is important and relevant to your donors. I only have 150 followers on twitter (I think) but I hope that everytime I tweet or RT a message, those followers are finding it useful or enlightening or informative or funny.

And that to me, it is the one of the most important measurements.