Almost every day I read articles about the difficulty of measuring the impact of social media on a brand. There are big debates not only about how to measure, but also about what to measure. But perhaps it is worth taking a step back to ask, "Why should you measure social media?"

Word-of-mouth traffic can be some of the best, most qualified visitors to your site. But, how do you actually know if you are getting traffic from word of mouth? Pay-per-click and search engine optimization efforts are easy to track with Web analytics because you can segment out traffic based on the specific referrers or entry pages. You have to be a bit more creative to find the word-of-mouth traffic.

Reading Jakob Nielsen’s great article today, ‘Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click’, got me thinking about delivering my first few training sessions when I was with ClickTracks. The reason for this was this heading: “Unique Visitors” Must Die.

Using Web analytics just to churn out reports for management is like driving a Porsche in bumper-to-bumper traffic. You’re not putting the pedal to the metal and using it for all it’s worth.