Michael Cervino addresses this question in Chapter 8 of “Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission.” Instead of just jumping on the Web 2.0 train, think about your expectations for each of these tools. For example, people generally think of LinkedIn as more of a professional networking community versus a personal networking community. What type of community do you want to develop?
Cervino also offers some suggestions establishing your baselines when getting started.
1) Mine the data.
2) Survey your constituents.
3) Compare to peers.
4) Study nonprofit benchmarks and metrics.
5) Review other industry metrics.
Regardless of which tool you use in the Web 2.0 world, there are three key questions to ask when examining online activity.
1) How are constituents finding out about us or connecting through to us?
2) What are they doing when they interact with us?
3) When are they leaving and why?
My recommendation to answer these questions is to use Google analytics. It’s a great tool for gathering some of this data.