So I’m sitting in church and they’re passing around the collection plate. At which point I started thinking that clearly the church is hurting too because the little baskets are really flying down the aisles. Given that church is a great place to take stock of all things in ones life, I grabbed my smartphone and jotted down the following thoughts and questions.

• Social media measurement and its associated metrics will change with the changing of external markets and it’s influencers.
• As the economy changes, so do the rules of engaging the consumer and marketing to that consumer. They have to. They must.
• Will or should social media engagement be measured differently in tough economic times? Yes?
• Should or will the tone of marketing and social media marketing change?
• Do peoples expectations of social media change during economic woes? No. because they haven’t set any precedents yet.
• Do we change benchmarking for social media? My thoughts are we would have to, since there is zero empirical data to go off of.
• How important does social media optimization and SEO now become? I think it’s huge.
• If times were different would some social media startups have a fighting chance? or do they now have an even better chance of surviving? Which is it?
• Will social nets thrive now or in the next 24 months given the current state?
• Their success will be determined by what? The same metrics? Or can startups afford to be measureed by engagement only?

So I was still feverishly texting these into my notes section of my phone well after the collections had been taken.  At which point, I looked up and saw that I was getting some nasty looks from the following: the people in the pew to my right,  the people directly to the left of me, my wife, an usher, and my kids, who thought I was playing Bejeweled.

That’s ok though, because If I’m thinking of these things,  maybe marketers, social media marketers, start-ups and even GOD might be too! Though divine intervention as a variable into any metric is a given, right?