Even the softer measures of earned/social media get translated into KPIs and optimized mostly because we can, but also because those metrics can provide illumination and insight when used correctly.

Among the recommendations at the end of the survey is for management to incorporate a "listening system" to capture social media data and transform it into metrics.

Another finding in the Conference Board survey is that at the senior management level, most companies are not gathering and circulating reports containing summary metrics from social media.