We just listened to a BlogTalk Radio show by online social community SocialMediopolis. EMarketer founder Geoff Ramsey was the guest of hosts Michael Crosson and Chicke Fitzgerald.

“I’m a self-professed one-trick pony when it comes to entrepreneurship,” said Ramsey. A prior ad agency employee at several firms, Ramsey began EMarketer as his search for online measurement and consistent statistics became more and more frustrating. Now he focuses daily on online marketing from every aspect including best social media practices. EMarketer looks at how many are using social media, how they’re using it, what the demographics are, how much time they spend on social networks, what their attitudes and behaviors are towards advertisers, and how and how many marketers are using social media.

“Social media is like the Wild West,” said Ramsey. “A couple of years ago Twitter barely existed. Now social media is pervasive, distributed everywhere, becoming part of e-commerce, content sites, and even HR.”

Ramsey said that user ratings and reviews were the impetus behind e-commerce as part of social media. He said that report after report pointed out that consumers trust each other more than they trust anyone else, and that the more affinity they have with other consumers the more they trust them. Which, he said, is why affinity groups are going to become more and more important on social sites.

While Ramsey says there is a long way to go before e-commerce becomes commonplace on social sites the trend is there. He talked about products such as Facebook Connect, which allow consumers to take action including purchases from social sites without having to leave the social site for the retailer’s site to complete the transaction.

“I think advertising on social media is only going to rise slightly, and won’t be a big engine driver. I think the e-commerce aspect, on the other hand, could be huge,” said Ramsey. “We just have to figure out who manages it and who gets compensated and to what extent are you adding value?” He said that we can’t have micropayments and insertions of credit cards to buy consumer reports, for example. We have to make it as seamless as possible for the consumers to go through the buying process, Ramsey told the radio listeners.

Ramsey was adamant that the subscription model was not the way to go, discussing how newspaper and magazines are erring by trying to untrain their followers from expecting online content to be free.

While only 12 percent of marketers using social online can claim a positive ROI, Ramsey said that would increase. He offered several tips:

* Look at your marketing objectives;

* Organize the metrics you want to look at in a logical framework, especially for e-commerce, and on three key levels – exposure, engagement, and ROI;

* You can’t just try your social media campaign for a few weeks; this is about creating and nurturing long-term relationships;

* Look at hard metrics, the kind of thing the CEO will sit up and take notice about; look at soft metrics as well. Pay attention to what consumers are saying.

If you’d like to listen to the entire show, go to BlogTalkRadio SocialMediopolis.