Inside a recent fortune cookie: “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.”

Putting aside that fortune cookies are no longer fortunes anymore, they’re aphorisms (or “sh**ty observation cookies” as my friends Constantin and Paull call them), this is a pretty good aphorism about social media.

While I believe that it’s essential that social media managers, and their marketing and PR colleagues, figure out how to measure the ROI of social media – the statistics part – I also think there’s an important judgment part of social as well.  Kat French says it’s about narrative and anecdote – that you’ve got to put aside the “idiot gauges” and figure out what the customer and brand impact really is.