You have social marketing data.  Use it.  Focus on making good business decisions.

That was lesson number one from my Digiday SOCIAL measurement panel today, featuring Mike Moran, Strategist, Converseon; Jon Gibbs, VP of Insights, Nielsen Online; David Honig, Advisor and Co-founder of Media6degrees; Eric Wheeler, CEO, 33Across; and Michael Gorman, VP, Global Strategy, Acxiom.

There are some very real reasons why marketers get paralyzed by the volume of data and the number of different vendors:

1. Too many choices can cause in-action.
2. The technology is dynamic and evolving.
3. Non-marketing executives don't get why measurement is worth an investment.
4. Social marketing is just starting to be a channel in its own right. 

Which leads us to another challenge: If we embrace the importance of measurement, how the heck do we get started?  "Don't measure what you aren't doing, and measure everything else," quipped Mike Moran.  "Seriously: Just start.  Fail quickly and then learn and improve."

"Piece-meal is not enough!  You have to look at it holistically," said David Honig.  "I hear a lot of fragmented measurement stories.  The data is available to you and needs to be managed across media and markets."

Jon Gibbs agreed, "It's not about the individual networks like Digg vs. Facebook, it's about listening to the conversations that are happening.  These are cross-media and cross-market.  Looking at the data at a notch higher helps you plan and manage where the conversation needs to move."

Identifying active influencers - regardless of media or network -- can significantly boost results, reported Eric Wheeler.  "One of our CPG clients found a 4x lift in sharing of a video among those identified as influencers than those who were not.  Identifying those people in your ecosystem will help you optimize  your advertising spend, as well as focus your attention on nurturing conversations."

Michael Gorman outlined four key categories of metrics to manage.  "Look at content, connections, engagement, and business outcomes," he advises.  "The specific items vary by marketer and social media setting, but all marketers from retail to B2B can benefit from tracking at those levels."

My recommendation for those struggling to manage the data and make sense of it:

1. Make a commitment.  Start simple with a spreadsheet and a weekly meeting, and then build once you learn what really drives your business.

2. Measure by purpose.  Customer service might be measured on cost savings and buzz.  Promotions might be measured by revenue contribution.  Media might be measured by impressions or click throughs or conversions.  Branding campaigns may be measured by buzz impressions or mentions.  All of these might be measured to show contribution to overall market share of noise.

3. Stop marketing TO people, and start conversations.  Identify the kinds of conversations that best move the needle on your business and find or create them - and then nurture.

Thanks to all these fabulous gents for a great panel, and to Digiday for having us!

How are you measuring social media?  Let's get some questions going for the panelists to answer here.