Recently, I was invited to speak at a conference on the topic of business-centric reporting for social media. To many people, this matter is akin to week-old toast – dry and difficult to swallow. It’s hard to imagine that the nuts and bolts of online measurement have anything to do with the bottom line.

For this reason, many business executives shy away from forcing agencies to focus on the brass tacks behind their efforts. This allows room for irrelevancies to creep into the reporting process. It muddies the water, leaving in its wake a trail of useless figures that have no bearing on sales or business objectives.