Research firm Nielsen has partnered its social monitoring service BuzzMetrics with management consultancy McKinsey to form NM Incite, a social media consultancy.

The new company will aim to help businesses harness the full potential of social media intelligence and focus on measuring the impact social media has on businesses.

It will be led by Dave Hudson, who was previously executive VP of global client services at Nielsen’s telecoms arm.

At present NM Incite has only launched in the US, but Nielsen said it would be looking to expand into other core markets based on client needs.

In January, Nielsen announced it would extend its partnership with Facebook to measure the impact of online branding ads on Facebook (nma 28 January 2010).