Let's face it: Any idiot can launch a Facebook page, upload a video to YouTube, or tweet about a well-written magazine article until he gets carpel tunnel. However, for businesses, without quality messaging and proper analysis, these efforts are utterly useless in most instances.

While many take the position that it's vital for all companies to have a strong and diversified social-media platform, others are quick to point out that many social-media activities are a time drain that will likely never generate revenue. While both sides present valid arguments, my philosophy on social media remains the same: You won't know if it works—or doesn't—until you test it for yourself.

Determining your social-media goals and measuring your results are the absolute most important steps before planning or executing a social-media marketing campaign. Identifying key milestones early will help you to determine how much time, finances, and resources to allocate to your efforts. I asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council about the ways in which they test and measure their social-media marketing initiatives, as well as the tools they utilize to ascertain value. Read below for their advice.

1. Test the Water

This one is less scientific than most people would recommend, but it works well to broadly determine if you're on your market's mind. If you take a look at the blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of your audience, are you seeing them talking about you, your product, or your business? If you browse through a few and see nothing, you need to up your social-media game.

—Colin Wright, Ebookling

2. Utilize Free Social-Media Monitoring Tools

Great question! Measure the effectiveness and impact of your social-media efforts using a plethora of free tools including Wildfire Social Media Monitoring, SocialMention.com, TweetBeep.com, and others. Review trending and set benchmarks based on historical success.

—Erica Nicole, YFS Magazine: Young, Fabulous & Self Employed

3. How Many Customers Are You Actually Getting?

After all the point of marketing is to bring in new business right? Ever see an infomercial that seems to be on every channel? Well, it's because it's working. If your social-media marketing isn't bringing in new customers it's time to change what you're doing. Of course that means, you need to ask how customers/clients are finding you.

—Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor

4. Social-Media Coverage

Measure success with social-media marketing by the diversity of social-media "coverage" you are receiving in different media outlets (including traditional) as a result of your social-media work. For example, if a TV Producer found you because of a link that you tweeted to your work, which in turn landed you a segment, then social media is clearly working for you! It helps you round out your brand

—Kris Ruby, Ruby Media Group

5. Google Analytics Tells All

If the number of people searching your brand's name and clicking onto your site increases, along with your traffic from Twitter, Facebook and your average number of sales, as no result of any new marketing campaigns, it's safe to assume your social-media marketing efforts are working. The numbers on Analytics will show you people are sharing the good word about your business, and that's perfect.

—Danny Wong, Blank Label Group, Inc.

6. Seek Simplification When Considering Marketing Success

Social-media metrics are addicting, but many are utterly irrelevant. Ask yourself why you started using social media in the first place. Are you getting more subscribers, more traffic, more interaction, more online discussion? Surprisingly, these things (the things that matter) are often quite easy to measure. Don't overcomplicate things searching for the perfect online metric or tool.

—Kent Healy, The Uncommon Life

7. Invest in the Long Term

Social-Media marketing may seem like you need immediate returns, but you should also understand that long tail content goes a long way. Spend the money to make an amazing YouTube video and it lives on forever. Spend the money to have someone humanize your brand on Twitter and they'll build long last relationships. You can't do that with offline marketing.

—Jason Sadler, IWearYourShirt.com

8. Measure Quantitatively and Qualitatively

Certainly measure the obvious—visits to your website, new customers, referrals, etc. But, also be sure to measure what is being said. Proactively building your brand and creative a positive reputation online can pay dividends for years to come.

—Shama Kabani, Marketing Zen

9. How Social Are You?

What's your answer if someone asked "how do you measure success as an individual in the society?" Is it number of friends, likability, number of people talking about you? Tough, huh? So, ignore all the shiny tools and technology to measure social media and focus on leveraging it better with interesting content and conversations. The RTs, comments, and Likes would guide your way to social-media success.

—Devesh Dwivedi, breakingthe9to5jail.com