A couple of days ago, I hinted at how I might go about measuring the impact of my social media efforts. In other words, how has my business, my profile and my reputation benefited as a result?

There are tools for this. For instance, let's look on Ecademy. Consider these stats:

What can we deduce from this? I'd be open to your comments. Here's what I think:

• Just because people are looking at your site doesn't mean they're liking you, rating you or buying you.
• Popularity in quantity is only one measure of reputation.
• These results are low in terms of actual improvement but encouraging in terms of showing some return for my efforts.
• Is there a tipping point where significant gains can be made if I keep on putting in 5 hours a week?
• Is 5 hours a week enough? How much are other people putting in?
• Rankings like these cover years of networking. I'm measuring progress over five short days.
• I may be spending 5 hours doing the wrong things?
• I wonder if I was coached on Ecademy networking - what kind of a difference would that make?
  

In fact, why don't I go back on the site, post a request, say I'm willing to be an Ecademy guinea pig and see what happens in getting some coaching to use the site in better ways?

The power of a network is not in the names and profiles of the people in it, but in the accessibility, the contribution and the leverage of those people.