It’s definitely true that as far as social media marketing is concerned, metrics are extremely poor.  But you must look a bit deeper before you roll your eyes at that blogger sitting at your local coffee hangout, as you ponder.."what could he possibly know that I don't know about running a business"?  If you're going to stay ahead of your competition on the Internet, you must start looking at things a little bit differently. 

Trying to measure results the old fashion way was relatively easy, or mabye we just forgot what it took to do it, and to really "get it". The problem is....You can’t equate “Clicks” or “Impressions” with “Conversation”.  Social Media is about what people are talking about and where.  The trick is to be able to track these conversations and actively influence them.  Another word for Social media marketing is “Word of Mouth” Marketing.  

The future of social media marketing will be in the power of a single person to persuade another person, or 10, 100, or 1,000 people.  Web 2.0 then allows those people to “share” their experience in a similar way, thereby creating a viral effect as well.

Cluttery ads, sitting in social networks have very little influence.  But if someone in that social network told you about this great new product and told you where to find it, that is the power of social marketing.

It’s happening, and the tools to make it happen more seamlessly are being developed.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but when we meet again, I can go over it step by step, how with the right strategy, social media marketing will blow away search engine optimization or SEM.