In a tweet, Gov 2.0 pathfinder Brian Humphrey opined: “The 4 Mileposts to #SocialMedia Success: Desirable, Beneficial, Justifiable and Sustainable.”

What makes social media justifiable?

We all know that Twitter is desirable.  After all, everyone’s using social media.

We have all heard stories about the benefits of social media.

Have we heard about justifiable social media?  It seems we’ve heard more people not allowed to use social media because … well …sometimes it really IS just because.

When social media grows up to present itself as a case to decision makers, social media will become sustainable.

Some tools that can help build that case are:

1.  SocialOomph…this tool has some very useful tracking tools related to followers, URL shortening.  When management wants to know how many followers you have, there’s a graph for that.  Being asked how many Direct Messages have been sent?  There’s a graph for that. Why is the Friend/Follower ratio at 38.2%? There’s a graph for that.

2.  HootSuite is another tool that has some really superior Twitter tracking tools.  How many clicks on your tweets happened this week or this month?  Which of the tweets were the most popular?  This tool will help you adjust your social media strategy by showing you successful tweets versus the less than stellar ones.

3.  At Twitter Counter, users will find a graph of users along with projections of followers and tweets.  Again, the user would be able to show management a viable tweeting effort, if, indeed, there is one.

4.  Looking at TwitDiff, users can easily set up an account to track the followers who unfollow.  Using this tool, the twitter user can determine the name and location of the unfollowing soul.  Thus, adjustments may be necessary to overcome a mass exodus, if, again, indeed, there is one.

OH, and by the way, management can use these tools since they are free, for the most part.  Therefore, the social media guru in your department might get ahead of that curve.

After all, it’s part of the justification process for social media in government.