2011 will be the year that PR pros have to get serious about social media, writes Ari Adler at Ragan.com.

It will be the year that PR pros are expected to deal with social media metrics rather than just using Twitter and Facebook.

“You can’t simply report the data anymore; you need to be able to dig into it, understand it and translate it for the client or organization,” Arik Hanson, principal of ACH Communications in Minneapolis, told Adler. Plus, as other PR pros pointed out, social media numbers may be plateauing—”Fans and followers are becoming harder to find, and online social spaces are developing more niches,” communications coordinator Angela Minicuci told Adler.

Which means that much harder of a hustle to get those fan numbers up.