I recently had the chance to explore Yellowstone. Well, at least as much as one can explore of that enormous park in two days. Aside from being one of the most magical places I’ve ever been, it reminded me that sometimes the best places to explore aren’t always the farthest away.

Walking through the kaleidoscope of colored hot vents in the geyser basin areas, I realized how reckless I’ve been for focusing so much on traveling to far away places that I’d failed to realize how many wonders there are right here in the states. Yellowstone is beautiful. Herds of bison litter the roadside, hot springs and mud pots collaborate to form an alien landscape and a backdrop of skies filled with the smoke of forest fires reminds you of nature’s humbling power.

Yellowstone wielded the best treasures of any place I’ve ever explored. The best part: Yellowstone was completely absent from my list of must see places. I will wander among the Nile’s pyramids, touch the Roman columns and breath the ancient Constantinople air…one day. But in the meantime, I’ll take many more detours.

Exploration is more about state of mind than about travel itineraries. During the couple of days I spent wondering what I’d find around the next bend, Yellowstone lent me something I’d lost along with my childhood: imagination.

I’ll be back to borrow that from Yellowstone again, soon.

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.