Hi Mark, thanks for your comment. I'll start by saying that we never claimed to reinvent the wheel here. These may be basic marketing strategies for measurement, but they also adhere to a pragmatic approach. And, despite their basic nature – we've encountered very few companies who actually do this! Thus, we feel that it's worth reiterating what you may deem the basics until people start to apply this knowledge in practice.

One thing we did not state is that each of our measurement buckets would suffice for all companies. In fact, we iterated several times that these metrics and the framework we offer is merely a starting point. Each measure and the framework as a whole MUST be customized to meet the unique goals of individual businesses. For this reason we began with a generic set of principles by which companies can start to measure the effects of their social efforts. This measurement stuff takes work. Thus, the comment about the lack of silver bullets. Their simply aren't any shortcuts to doing this well. Each organization needs to think through their own unique needs and situation and then apply rigor around their process for ongoing assessment.

You're right in that we didn't include sales conversions in our framework. This is because we hope that all organizations are doing this now. If not, then applying our method is equivalent to pushing the cart down a really steep hill and then heading to the barn to grab the horse. Unfortunately this has already happened with the launch of numerous social media efforts, but we'd like to believe that planning is a critical part of the process. Our goal is for Social Analytics is for measurement to be considered up front so that social efforts can be effectively tracked and managed. Despite the somewhat basic mentality behind this, too few companies are doing it today.

Hope this helps clarify.
Cheers,
John Lovett