Pop.to might be just what I was looking for

I joined a beta program recently for a product called Pop.to from Crowd Factory. I found it, in all places, on a Facebook -- and and I NEVER click on Facebook ads, but this piqued my interest.

Measurement and Engagement are two of the big must-do's of social media.  The problems are, one, engagement and measurement are generally two separate efforts and, two, everyone has a different goal in measurement.  To do the job right, you have to figure out what you want to measure first and hope it is the right thing to measure.  Once you begin the engagement though, what your audience is interested in may completely change what you want to measure -- and hamper engagement in the process.

I've always thought that there could be a way to engage and listen to your audience, so you could adjust accordingly, but have it tied directly into the measurement, all in one effort.  When I checked out Pop.to, I said, "Eureka!"

Here's what I understand so far.  Pop.to allow you to create a widget on a blog or website that allows readers to easily rate the content with a simple thumbs-up or star or heart, and link that rating to their Facebook or Twitter account (other platforms like Linked-in are being considered).  In making that link, they can answer a few questions about themselves that you determine, just so you can determine if you are reaching the people you want to reach.  The reader can go into greater detail about why they endorse the link, or they can just click the button and be done with it.  That information is cataloged in Pop.to.  Going a step further, however, anyone who clicks on the link within the original link also gets measured.  And then it all gets fed back into your site creating a constant loop of engagement and measurement.  At any time you can change the parameters of the engagement, add additional widgets to various parts of the site.

There may be other similar tools out there, but none that quite do what I was looking for,  I am going to have fun with this.