Social networks, (SM,) for some people, believe that the success they can bring is not measurable. However, if you believe this, then you are listening to the wrong people.

Actually, there are several sites that can help you determine your success, popularity and the successes of your competition through SM.

Here are six sites that offer measurable means for your SM presence:

1. Daily comments: It’s easy to log into your Facebook account and take note of all your likes over a period of time. However, to get a more accurate status of your likes, including your comments, Facebook offers a daily comments feature. You can find it here: facebook.com/insights. It’s great to know how many comments you’re actually getting, and if you’re not getting as much as you’d like, you can now see the actual numbers that can help you develop a better social media plan.

2.Klout: Klout is beneficial for keeping up with your Twitter account. Klout will measure your tweets, followers, retweets, link clicks, etc., to determine how well you are using Twitter as a social networking site. They recently added a Facebook feature that helps monitor that account as well, but is even more beneficial for your Twitter account.

3.PostRank: PostRank offers a free membership and a membership that costs $15 per month. What it does is measure how well your blog is received and which sharing methods are the most popular. It will take into account if your comments, diggs, tweets, etc., are the most beneficial for your blog. Also, you can connect to your Google Analytics account to get a more detailed score for your blog. Like Klout, PostRank provides an engagement score, which is an overall score of your comments, tweets, shares, etc. set. This is beneficial because you can see which of your blog posts have had the most impact.
4. Shared voice: It is definitely realistic to take into account how many times your products and promotions are mentioned through social media. But have you thought to consider how many comments and shares your competitors receive? There are three sites; Social Mention, Radian6 and ViralHeat. You can set up a “Share of Voice” report for the last 30 days, both for your business and your competitors, and compare them. Account for all positive, neutral, and negative responses that you and your competitors may have received.

5. Volume search: One of the most important aspects of measuring your business is not just measuring your social media efforts, but combining it with search. Google offers a system called Google Insights that allows you to see if people are searching for your business and/or products. It also provides whether or not there is an increase in people searching for you, which can tell you whether or not your social media accounts are working for you. In 2009, a study provided by GroupM was conducted which, in conclusion, found that consumers are 2.8 times more likely to visit your sites if they were first exposed to your brand through social media.

6. Link Tracking: Links are one of the most important things to have a successful online business. With that comes tracking where you posted links, who is linking to your site from theirs, and who is sharing your link on their own social media accounts. There are some sites that will measure your link exposure. Those are OpenSite, Explorer and SEOmoz. They will allow you to track your links from Facebook, blogs, twitter, etc.

Although there is no magic number that will give you the exact measure of your success through SM, these sites can definitely help and be beneficial. Also, with the sites mentioned above, and depending on what your business does and who you are trying to reach, you can certainly come to a conclusion as to which sites and plans are best for your business.