Step 1: Define your measures of success. “Many PR people are not clear about their goals for social media,” says Paine. “They’re doing a blog or a podcast because someone told them it’s a good idea.” Without clear objectives, Paine says, you have nothing to measure against.

“If your goal in getting into social media is to get your feet wet, then the outcome is wet feet,” Paine says. Pick an objective like, “Generate sales leads,” or “Increase customer newsletter subscriptions” for a measurable starting point.

Step 2: Define your audiences. “People think the blogosphere is one happy—or unhappy—group of people,” Paine says. Not only is it daunting to think of your audience as the trillions of blogs in the blogosphere, it’s simply incorrect. Figure out who will care about the social media content you are creating—and only measure that audience.

Step 3: Define the benefits. Determine the benefits that you want to quantify when you measure social media, advises Paine. For instance: increase sales, reduce turnover, or improve reputation. Then be clear about how communications contributes to those outcomes.

Step 4: Define your benchmarks. “We don’t have reliable numbers on how many people read a specific blog,” says Paine. “So your benchmarks have to be something like your past performance, or your reputation versus that of your competition.”

Step 5: Select a measurement tool. Paine suggests using Web sites like Technorati and Sphere or Radian 6 to keep an eye on conversations about your organization, and methods for measuring “engagement” of your audiences. You also will need some good Web analytics—Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture to figure out what actions your audience is taking.

Step 6: Analyze. “Research without analysis is just trivia,” says Paine. Figure out what actions you should take based on your social media conversations, and which tools (blogs, podcasts, YouTube, social networking sites, virtual communities) work better than others in generating conversations about your organization.