As I tweeted this morning, Alan Wolk more-or-less read my mind today with this post titled Interaction Burnout. He gets into what I call “bad metrics” here

Much of this unnecessary patter is due to the unrealistic expectations brands (and the agencies and consultants that enable them) have for social media. Where, in a misguided quest for easily understood metrics, success has come to mean x number of Twitter followers or y number of Facebook Fan Page updates each month

This is something that drives me nuts. Social media marketing is, at its core, marketing. It’s goal is to increase sales, sign-ups, usage, etc.. Move the needle. As Alan mentions, these metrics are easy, and that’s what makes them benchmarkable, but in the end, do they really matter?

Later in the post, he’ mentions a few things companies undertaking social efforts need to understand. My favorite:

You need to find one particular area of social media you feel comfortable with – which might just be a blog or a YouTube channel — and concentrate on being really, really good at that, especially if it makes sense in terms of who your customers are.

So many people spread themselves too thin. Don’t waste 5 hours a week developing an executing your Twitter strategy if you only have a few customers there. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting “You Need to Be On Twitter!” in every newsletter and journal you get. If it’s not right, don’t waste time.

Read Alan’s entire post here.