Are You Using Misleading Social Media Metrics?

I just finished reading Marcus Sheridan’s blog post entitled, “The 10 Most Misleading Social Media Metrics in the World.” Sheridan, a former missionary and current swimming pool company owner,  speaker, marketing consultant, Web and Hubspot coach, and blogger for The Sales Lion, offers his take on the uselessness of some of the most popular social media metrics.

So, what can we learn from this swimming pool/marketing guy? Quite a lot, in fact.

There is a big problem with all these social media numbers that are soooo important to the success of your business—many don’t mean squat. In other words, a number, no matter how high it is, is worthless to a business unless it leads to more sales and customers, period.”

He’s right. Social media is a marketing tool to help businesses and nonprofits acquire new leads, customers, donors, whatever…  I’ll add one more good reason to use social media – to build search engine optimization (SEO) and brand awareness – which, in turn, should lead to “more leads, customers, donors, whatever…”

The ten misleading social media metrics that Sheridan expounds upon are:

1. Alexa
2. Klout
3. Twitter Followers
4. Likes, Tweets, Shares
5. Fans
6. Comments
7. Video Testimonials
8. Pinterest
9. StumbleUpon (and others like it)
10. Viral Video

Read the entire post for his explanations. What do you think? Have you had any positive results using any of these metrics? Do you think any are useless?