"Here's a framework for measuring social media:
1. Attention. The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time. Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
2. Participation. The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel. Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
3. Authority. Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content – like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
4. Influence. The size of the user base subscribed to your content. For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

There's an "x-factor" that comes into play well: sentiment. The spirit driving user participation matters. The net result of these adds up to a score for social media engagement."

Document Cloud: an experiment worth keeping an eye on

Check out my piece on this cool experiment in real-time poll monitoring…