Tracking social media effectiveness is not easy. As more and more companies enter the social media waters, they all face the challenge of tracking the ROI from their efforts. This is not a new challenge or topic. But as the market is increasingly flooded with social media “experts,” I see more and more focus being put on the number of followers or friends, as opposed to tangible results.

The misconception is that followers or friends are an audience. These days though, companies and people collect followers and friends as easily as loose change in the couch cushions. (A test for you: open a twitter account, tweet a couple of thoughts, leave it alone, and see how many spammer followers you get.) As more and more companies venture into the space, with their own unique content, you’re competition for attention grows.

Again, just because people are following you doesn’t mean they’re actually listening.

Better metrics to measure are the response you can elicit from your audience, which gives you a better idea of your actual audience. How many responses do you get to questions posed on Twitter? How many comments do you get on blog posts? How many user-submitted photos do you have on your FB page?

But there are even better indicators  to measure. Integrating social media with other channels allows you to begin to tie social media into ROI. For example: how many email opt-ins have you pulled from your FB page, or from Twitter? How has your blogging strategy improved your search results for targeted keywords? How many lead gen forms on your site have you captured from traffic coming from your YouTube page?

None of these are all encompassing metrics, because every situation and campaign is different. And don’t misunderstand me, I am certainly not discounting some of the less tangible benefits of social media such as customer service, reputation management or word of mouth.

All I know is that when my boss asks me how effective our Facebook campaign has been, I’d certainly rather tell him that it gained us x email opt-ins, which netted us x new customers…then report on how many fans we collected.