Social media, as we know it today, is only a few years old – at best (Mark Zuckerberg invented Facemash on October 28, 2003; and work on “the Twitter project” started on March 21, 2006).

Yet, remarkably (!), the world today is filled with so-called social media experts (Google search generates 289,000 results for this term) and yet very few (surprise-surprise) are measuring much or developing metrics that support the execution of a social media strategy based on ROI.

So, what is really happening here? How are BtoB and BtoC companies managing their social media strategies? How are they measuring ROI?

Business.com recently published its “2009 Social Media Benchmarking Study” – and we take note because of the depth of their research based on insights into business social media usage provided by nearly 3,000 North American business professionals.

According to them, the two types of firms, BtoB and BtoC, have different social site usage patterns for business purposes – with BtoB firms demonstrating marketing leadership.

Their study found that:

• B2B companies already using social media were much more active in the space than their B2C counterparts, especially when it came to microblogging, participating in discussions on third-party sites, blogging and monitoring company mentions on various social media. Plus, they were managing profiles across more social sites and were significantly more likely to be present on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

• B2Cs were ahead in a few areas: social media advertising, user ratings and reviews, and online communities for customers and prospects, and won the day at Facebook and MySpace.

• B2B social media users were more active in measuring most social success metrics as well and more B2Bs were looking at Web traffic, brand awareness, and prospect lead quality and volume.

• Six in 10 B2B respondents used Twitter search to monitor mentions of their company or brand, compared with just 35% of B2Cs. The difference in usage of Google Alerts was slightly smaller, at 59% of B2Bs versus 40% of B2Cs. Consumer-oriented firms were most likely to keep tabs on mentions via Google search, at 61%, just edging out B2B companies, 60% of which googled themselves for this purpose.

How companies are measuring Social Media Success:

The average company in this study used four different success metrics:

1. The amount of web site traffic generated — the most popular way
2. Engagement – with prospects and customers
3. Brand impact – awareness and reputation
4. Leads – both quantity and quality

• Companies measuring leads are more likely to also measure the revenue impact of social media initiatives than companies which don’t focus on leads.

• Also, companies judging the success of their social media initiatives on engagement with prospects and/or customers are more likely to also measure brand impact than they are revenue or leads.

The study also asked respondents to tell how well they can see the impact of company social media initiatives on the success metrics they use today:

• 65% of respondents using web site traffic as a social media success metric report that the data they need is either part of standard reports today or is easily accessed when needed

• At the other end, 14% reporting that they don’t have the data (i.e., either they know they cannot measure the impact of social media initiatives on web site traffic at all or they have no idea whether or not the data is available)

• The brand metrics – awareness and reputation – fall to the bottom of the scale with almost equal percentages of respondents indicating that they can easily see the impact of social media initiatives on these metric or can’t measure the impact at all.

So, it looks like marketers are at least trying to measure social media success – but it isn’t clear this is a cross-industry trend.

“Looking at these results,” writes study author Ben Hanna, Ph.D. VP, Marketing R.H. Donnelley Interactive, “one can’t help but ask the obvious questions – how can a company claim to judge social media on a particular success metric like brand awareness or customer engagement with no ability to actually measure that metric? Do companies think they should measure the impact of social media on brand and engagement metrics but never get around to doing so? Or is this result more a function so many companies with little experience in social media participating in this study and we should expect that the ability to measure brand impact and engagement improves with experience?”

This study should provide you with context to decide how proactive you are in measuring social media success (you can access the complete study here).

The point is, are you in fact measuring social media success? Proactive companies are.

But all’s not well.

A few days ago, Reuters reported that about 60 percent of people on Twitter end up abandoning the service after a month.

Aggressively challenged by Twitter–aficionados, Reuters updated the study a few days later and went beyond just Twitter.com, adding in more than 30 websites and applications that feed into the Twitter community including: TweetDeck, TwitPic, Twitstat, Hootsuite, EasyTweets, Tumblr, and many others.

The results? The year-long retention curve looks very much the same as the one for just Twitter.com: more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month.

In other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent (and, No, Oprah hasn’t helped much).

But, seriously, is this really bad news? The blogosphere seems to think so but I don’t.

The low retention rates aren’t even surprising, really. Essentially, if you follow more than a few people, the overall experience can be very dissatisfying – especially as compared to the similar relationships on Facebook or even LinkedIn.

(Disclaimer: I am not writing here about people interested in simply Tweeting about what they had for lunch. Frankly, I don’t care – not should you care about what I had for lunch –carrots sticks at my desk; how fun is that! I am writing about Twitter as a business tool)

From a business perspective, it’s possible that Twitter has been over-hyped and that the metrics are all wrong. It’s not about how large your Follower list is but about how homogeneous it is.

Cases in point:

• I know a marketer who has highly focused but relatively short list of Followers who was turned down by an advertiser who was looking for large numbers of Followers. In the end, the advertiser went for a large list of unqualified Followers. This isn’t progress, folks. This takes us back right to the broadcasting model which has been declared no longer valid.

• I follow Starbucks, just because I am curious to see how they use the tool. So far, not a single Tweet has been of any interest to me whatsoever. I am still waiting to get a coupon for a free latte. (And please don’t tell me they have done that and I missed it – that would only confirm that following more than a few people can be very dissatisfying experience)

• Here is a website that reports on Top CMOs on Twitter. I challenge you to find one really important reason to follow any of them (other than waiting to get a coupon for something).

But, still, I love Twitter.

As a marketer concerned with effective, measurable tactics that are action-oriented, my primary concern with regards to Twitter is to secure Followers who belong to our target market and have a potential interest in our company’s offering.

And as a marketer, I know that the only way to achieve a homogeneous Follower list is to stay very focused on the content I provide on Twitter.

If you do that, you will achieve a Follower list that actually cares about what you have to say.

At WiderFunnel we know this for a fact: in the last few weeks we have secured new clients who have found us on Twitter. These individuals are interested in Conversion Optimization so they searched for the topic; found either one of Chris Goward’s Tweets or one of mine; clicked on to our website and the rest, like they say in Hollywood, is history.

So, yes, Twitter has is a big role to play in a marketers’ mix. The news of a low retention rate will ensure that the quality of the content improves so that they continue to attract Followers who are like-minded and therefore more likely to become clients.

What do you think? What examples of business success have you had with Twitter? What are your challenges?

A new comScore report reveals that AOL Community (the smallest on the list a year ago) and Twitter (very near the bottom last year) were the fastest growing sites in February 2009 compared to the same month a year ago, as follows:

• AOL Community +9513%
• Twitter +1085%
• LinkedIn + 110%
• Yahoo Buzz +169%
• SodaHead.com +132%

On the dark side, unique visitors to Friendster.com and Propeller.com are declining compared to a year ago, as are MSN Groups, and AIM Profiles.

For context, Total internet audience increased by 4% from the same period last year.

(For what it’s worth, the data are based on an opt-in panel of users representative of the U.S. population.)

So the fascinating question for marketers wanting to reach the right kind of people at the right time with the right message in the hopes of converting them into customers is: Are you at the right social party? Or, to paraphrase the Great One: Are you skating to where the puck is going, not to where it is?

To read up on who is on Facebook, go here; to learn about Twitter user profiles go here; and to learn how Men differ from Women (online, anyway) go here.