Why is measuring reach important? The number of times an article is tweeted or shared on Facebook or dug on Digg represents the comparable value of the information to the public, your readers, and your target audience. It also represents potential engagement: if your target audience likes what you are publishing, they’ll come back.

Social sharing is the simplest form of public approval and feedback. Think of it as a feedback loop.

It’s incredibly easy to share an article on Twitter, “like” a Facebook article or link, or save an article to a social bookmarking or social news site. With a few analytics tools you also know exactly which type of information you are publishing that others value enough to share are save. And, most importantly, articles (or videos, podcasts, etc.) that are shared also expose your organization’s message to new audiences. Social sharing is a represents the feedback loop of potential reach, reaction, analytical feedback, and organizational learning.

It’s all the more important, then, to access analytical feedback in order to produce relevant content that extends your organization’s reach and message. Ideally, relevant content moves your readers to action!

Four “must have” analytical tools for your organization that offer social sharing insights:

1. Tweetmeme Widget and Analytics

Tweetmeme is a service that aggregates popular links on Twitter. It is also a widget with analytics. If you are publishing online content, and want to encourage your readers to share it on Twitter, the Tweetmeme button is just the powerful widget you need. The button can be displayed above or below the content, and offers a simple way for readers to tweet articles from  your website without leaving the website. (A pop up appears asking to allow Tweetmeme to access the user’s twitter and tweet the URL.) Most importantly, once you add the Tweetmeme button to your blog (or site), the Tweetmeme button publicly displays the number of times an article has been tweeted and you can see who has tweeted it.  Whoever tweets or retweets your organizaation’s content is a potential fan or stakeholder.

As an illustration, you can view my blog’s Tweetmeme button at the bottom of this post. Below is a sample screen shot illustrating who tweeted my blog post entitled “Is Bureaucracy the Enemy of Social Media?” You can view more at Tweetmeme.com.

2. Facebook Share Widget and Analytics

Facebook rolled out a share widget in late 2009 that counts shares and offers analytics. Not surprisingly, there is a WordPress plugin as well (which I added to this blog). The button works exactly like the Tweetmeme button: readers don’t leave the page, the widget uses permission-based Facebook sharing, and the it offers powerful analytics. In fact, the analytics are incredible: see below.  The only thing it does not show is who shared your article, liked it, or clicked on it.

Below is a screen shot of the Facebook analytics overview, as viewed in WordPress Plugin Settings:

3. Add This Share Button and Analytics

There are a lot of social sharing buttons around, but AddThis offers exceptional value. Each week, AddThis offers site administrators detailed sharing analytics about where readers shared your information, total number of shares, sharing trends, and geographical sharing by continent. I think that most interesting feature of AddThis is the different methods that readers used to share content. You can use it to look at trends and understand how your readership prefers to share. Be sure to incorporate this feedback into your website. For example, if the most frequent type of share from your site is via email, then be sure to offer an email subscription service and an RSS feed via email.

I changed my website’s sharing button to AddThis on January 21. Here is a screen shot of my AddThis sharing analytics from January 21 -30, 2010:

4. Google Analytics Firefox Extension

The Google Analytics Firefox Extension offers a number of additions to Google Analytics, including social media metrics. This extension integrates the shares from your website to Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Yahoo into your Google Analytics, displaying shares by content. I wish that it revealed shares to Twitter and Facebook, but the sharing widgets mentioned above more than make up for this.

One specific issue: I know that some of my blog posts have been “stumbled,” but have not shown up in here.  The extension displays StumbleUpon reviews, but not “likes” or “stumbles.” As far as I can tell, it’s the only fault with the extension: if a post is “stumbled” but not reviewed, it does not appear in this set of analytics.

How do you measure social media sharing? What other tools analyze online sharing activities? What have you learned from your use of them?