In 2011, challenge your assumptions of what you are measuring and why. A few examples:

1. A Twitter mention by Shaq is worth more than someone who has 1/30 his followers right? Not if you’re a technology start up and that person with 1/30 of Shaq’s followers is Walt Mossberg.

2. It’s important to increase Facebook followers. Not if your followers are outside of your core demographic, have no ability to buy your product, fail to provide useful insight and are not interested in contributing to the community.

3. Share of conversion is a useful metric. Don’t mistake the % of mentions for influence or quality. However, deciding in which conversations you want to be mentioned is a useful exercise. It enables you to develop strategies to increase the mentions within the conversations by influential targets after you determine their value.

4. Twitter followers is the most important metric? Are they more important than lists that require a user to consider how they should categorize you; or @ replies, which demonstrate a desire to communicate?

5. Let’s drive traffic with SEO to non-ecommerce sites. Hope you have defined the value of the traffic first and how you measure conversion.

It’s an excellent idea to develop a social media scorecard; however, realize that scorecards support value systems of what is and is not important; the value system needs to be developed before the scorecard.

In terms of measurement, here’s are a few insights you might enjoy:

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