I saw a tweet recently from someone asking how to measure social media success. The insinuation seemed to be that "success" should be a scientific formula based on variables such as the number of blog comments, RSS subscribers, links, retweets, Facebook friends, Diggs, etc.

While all of the above are certainly solid metrics to demonstrate social media activity, they're just one approach to measuring success - and one that may not even come into play for some companies.

The most important thing in measuring social media success is figuring out your goals and what success looks like.

For some companies, success is straightforward: more sales or, at least, more leads. For others, success is a stronger brand, better customer service or having an equal presence as competitors. And for others, success is feedback and suggestions to improve their products and services.

In other words, success means different things to different companies.

Once a company figures out what success looks like and how it meets their strategic goals, it can begin to use social media as a communications, marketing or sales medium.

As important, it can measure on a regular basis, how its social media programs are faring based on its pre-determined objectives.

At the end of the day, companies can enjoy success without having higher sales, better customer service or valuable feedback from consumers if success doesn't take into account any of these variables.