The Great Social Media Measurement & Analytics Fallacy

SOCIALTALITY BLOG — A recent posting titled "What is Engagement and How do We Measure It" by Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls got me thinking.  In his posting, he quotes several sources who formulate engagement based on a wide assortment of trackable factors. In fact, he quotes Lee Odden who says: "Linking, bookmarking, blogging, referring, clicking, friending, connecting, subscribing, submitting inquiry forms and buying are all engagement measures at various points in the customer relationship." This is quite a melange of statistics. A person can easily get lost tracking the daily gyrations of a loosely associated string of digits. But, what do all these numbers really mean? Jason then points out that each of the luminaries' definitions are, to one degree or another, couched in the phrase, "it depends." I think Jason has uncovered one of the great fallacies of social media measurement...