2010 will be forever commemorated as the year Twitter matured from a cool but undecided teenager into a more confident and assertive young adult. While there’s still much room to mature and develop, Twitter’s new direction is crystallizing. With a new look, Dick Costolo as the new CEO, and an oversold new advertising platform, Twitter is growing into something not yet fully identifiable, but formidable nonetheless.

At a minimum, Twitter is an extension of each one of us. It feeds our senses and amplifies our voice. We’re connecting to one another through shared experiences creating a hybrid social network and information exchange tied by emotion and interest. While Twitter provides the technology foundation, it is we who make Twitter so unique and consequential by simply being human and sharing what we see, feel, and think – in Twitter time. It’s both a gift and a harbinger of enlightenment. As new media philosopher, and good friend, Stowe Boyd once said, “It’s our dancing that makes the house rock, not the planks and pipes. It is us that makes Twitter alive, not the code.”

Combining our senses with digital inner monologue is something that we must learn to use wisely . While we may have freedom of Tweet, we are also witnessing that in some cases, common sense is not so common after all.

As there are multiple sides to every story, in this case, Twitter, its users, and the sentiment in between, let’s look at the opposite end of the stream for a moment. Twitter isn’t the only character in this tale to have matured. You, me, and the other 150 million Twitter denizens also changed over the last year. Social media monitoring service Sysomos released new data that highlights just how far we have come between 2009 to 2010.

Let’s start with the population of Twitter. Twitter reportedly attracted more than 100 million users in 2010. While it’s not quite the size of Facebook, which currently serves as the digital residence of 550 million, its impact on media, culture and society is profound.

Social Biography

As Twitter is an extension of your digital identity, users are finding comfort in sharing more about who they are. In 2010, 69 percent shared a bio which is more than double of those who did so in 2009.

Bios are only one part of establishing a digital identity. Whereas with instant messaging services of old, with Twitter, we are encouraged to share our name rather than an alias. The jump here is also profound. 73 percent provide a detailed name or descriptor. Last year, only 33% were as revealing. This is part of the transition from Twitter as a micromessaging or microblogging network to a more personal extension of who we are.

Where in the world are we? On Twitter, 82 percent want you to know. In 2009 however, the number of those who shared their location was only half the size.

If Google “was” the resume of the individual in 2008 and 2009, perhaps Twitter, and also Facebook, are presenting us with a more favorable opportunity to design our online persona. Now 45 percent, up from 22 percent, share a URL in their Twitter profile.

As we can see, privacy is something that’s discussed on the “other” networks…not just Twitter. Here, its natives live in public and do so willingly.

Who are These Tweeple Anyway?

We are what we say. How we describe ourselves says much more about the greater community as well. Twitter’s citizens are expressive, combining emotion and fact as their verbal self portraits. Love. Life. World. Friends. Family.

In 2010, Twitter realized its greatest velocity of growth in its short four-year history. In just one year, 44% of its total population moved in to the micro utopia in the hopes of finding and sharing something missing elsewhere online and IRL.

Who you follow says a lot about us. While many use the follow as a strategy to boost follow-backs, following the right people is also where we can fine tune the signal versus noise in our social stream. As we can see, only .05 percent of the total Twitterverse have more than 10,000 friends and only 2.05 percent connect to more than 1,000. The majority of Tweeps, 95.8 percent, maintain a network of less than 500 friends.

On Twitter, one of the most popular discussions is popularity versus influence. No, influence is not popularity and popularity is not influence. But that doesn’t mean that earning a vast network of followers isn’t a remarkable achievement in and of itself. Only .06 percent of micro socialites on Twitter boast more than 20,000 followers. Again, the trend continues across the network. Still only 2.12 percent have more than 1,000 followers. This leaves the greater population to connect everyone else with 95.9 percent maintaining less than 500 followers. For those who pay attention to influence however, influence is measured by the quality and resonance of a network, not its size.

I always find it so fascinating when the Pareto principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, continues to prove itself over and over again. In Twitter’s egosystem, Of all Twitter users, 22.5 percent post 90 percent of Tweets.

.18 percent have published more than 25,000 Tweets. 2.7 percent have Tweeted more than 5,000 times. Just over 80 percent have either a bit of stage fright or they’re still finding their voice, with only sub 500 Tweets to their avatars to date. After almost four years on the service, I’ve published just over 9,000.

To this day, the friend to follower ratio continues to serve as an important benchmark. I think this is a dying stat as it only encourages us to dilute our streams with updates that don’t improve our Twitter experience. In 2011 and 2012, we will focus on ridding ourselves of the information overload that buried us in email and social networks in the past, concentrating on substance over numbers.

According to Sysomos, the follower-friend ratio is even until users reach about 1,050 followers. After, the numbers skew greater towards followers. The trend continues as followers outpace friends. For example, someone with 5,000 followers usually averages 3,700 friends. As we approach 10,000 followers though, the ratio balances again. Sysomos found that someone with 10,000 followers will most likely maintain an average of 9,600 friends.

Twitter continues to change how we discover, communicate, and share. Each time we do, we reveal a bit more about who we are and what moves us. As we embrace the new year, Twitter’s numbers will expand, but I believe the nature of the service and also how we use it will change significantly.

What do you think? Is this you?

UPDATE: To balance this post a bit, I ran traffic numbers for Twitter.com using Compete and I found something worthy of sharing. It appears that visits to Twitter.com in the U.S. is receding. Between July and October 2010, visits have gradually diminished from a high of roughly 29 million down to 26 million – close to the ~24 million closing out 2009. While many users access Twitter via third-party apps, traffic to the dotcom is a good indicator for potential growth. I should point out however, that globally, Twitter.com earned just over 100 million visitors in October, up 79 percent from 2009.

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Twitter is a stream of incredible collective consciousness.

Every day, people all over the world share their experiences through a truly personal lens, providing insight into the real-world experiences and observations that inspire conversations, define communities, and move markets – all in real time. Perhaps one of the most profound and largely untapped treasures in all of Social Media, Twitter indeed represents one of the world’s richest conversation mines. The openness of Twitter holds the information necessary to learn, adapt, earn relevance and ultimately establish significance in our respective markets.

We have to listen in order to mature…

Brands are consistently among the most discussed subjects on Twitter and as such, studying the activity transpiring on Twitter gives us insight into size, scope, and scale. Once again, I partnered with PeopleBrowsr, the data mining, analytics, and brand engagement company, to mine and analyze the conversations defining the most discussed brands on Twitter.

Our goal was to gain a comprehensive view of the conversational landscape for a period of one month, April 2010. And, in order to do so, we pulled running data from PeopleBrowsr’s new Analytic.ly service and also reviewed several lists to verify our top 20 brands for further analysis.

Upon review, we then ranked their stature based on individual share of voice as well as examining consumer sentiment through a form of manual curation to capture a true reflection of sentiment.

The Top Brands on Twitter: April 2010

We examined 20 of the most actively discussed brands on Twitter for the month of April, which equated to an astounding 24.3 million references. As you can see, only a handful of those companies dominated the overall conversation.

At the top, and to be expected, Twitter commanded a 36% share of voice with 8.76 million mentions. Twitter of course, rolled out several new and much discussed services at its first annual Chirp conference, which only fueled activity.

Following with 21% or 5.2 million appearances, YouTube was the second most discussed, or more accurately stated, shared brands on Twitter. Driven less by news and more by sharing the content within the network, YouTube nonetheless, enjoys a great volume of traffic as a result.

Facebook followed in third position with 9% (2.25 million mentions), driven by the buzz associated with its new “Like” feature, privacy concerns, as well as all discussions leading up to, through, and following the f8 Facebook developer conference.

With 1.5 million discussions, Apple earned a 6% slice of the conversation pie driven by the iPad and amplified by the news of what appeared to be the next generation iPhone 4.

In fifth position, Google captured 5% of all dialog related to brands at just about 1.32 million. Propelled by discussions around Android, new search functionality, new products, and of course, existing services such as Chrome, Google Docs, Adwords, etc.

Share of Voice

Twitter = 36%

YouTube = 21%

Facebook = 9%

Apple = 6%

Google = 5%

MySpace = 2%

Amazon = 2%

HP = 2%

Yahoo = 2%

Blackberry = 2%

Disney = 1%

Starbucks = 1%

MTV = 1%

eBay = 1%

BBC = 1%

Nokia = 1%

Sony = 1%

CNN = 1%

Nike = 1%

Microsoft = 1%

Brand Sentiment: April 2010

Sentiment reflects the state of mind or emotion of an individual as captured by their tone and cemented through their words. As long observed in any review-based network, experience-drive commentary is extremely emotional. In fact, in Amazon alone, most reviews skew either between 5 stars (the top) or 1, simply because of the strong emotional tie either way.

However, attitude, view, and intention are among the most difficult  to truly measure, no matter how sophisticated the software algorithm used to examine the dynamics of conversations.  When we review sentiment for these reports, we manually curate mentions to ensure that feeling is represented as planned. Click image to view detail…

According to our analysis, most of the discussed brands in our Top 20 report, were in fact, revered.

Ranking at the top with 98%, Twitter seemed to shed its epic #failwhale to earn a state of unrivaled prestige.  Drafting Twitter’s top position is Facebook, earning a 97% positive sentiment. And while it also earned a 97% positive sentiment ranking, YouTube followed closely for the third most positively discussed brand for April 2010 with MTV trailing closely for the fourth most coveted brand on the list. With 96%, BlackBerry performed well enough conversationally to garner the fifth spot.

In order for winners to exist, we must also balance the equation with, well, those on the other end of the spectrum. In the case, the separation between positive and negative among the top 20 is extreme. As mentioned, Twitter earned a 98% positive sentiment analysis, but on the contrary, Microsoft earned 18% negative share with Apple and MySpace following closely with 17%. In Apple’s case, it was clear that the Twitter community didn’t support its strong arm tactics behind the iPhone 4 investigation.

I’ve always believed that neutral conversations symbolized some of the greatest opportunities for steering indifferent or blasé updates towards positive territory. In April, HP ranked atop the conversations that sat in the middle with 80%. MySpace followed with 73%. Interestingly, Google drafted MySpace for a third place finish. And, with 59%, Apple chalked up a solid position of indifference good enough for the fourth spot.

April 2010 Sentiment Breakdown

Positive: 98%
Neutral: 2%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 96%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 1%

Positive: 94%
Neutral: 6%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 94%
Neutral: 5%
Negative: 1%

Positive: 86%
Neutral: 12%
Negative: 2%

Positive: 85%
Neutral: 12%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 85%
Neutral: 13%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 81%
Neutral: 17%
Negative: 2%

Positive: 76%
Neutral: 22%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 72%
Neutral: 18%
Negative: 9%

Positive: 70%
Neutral: 29%
Negative: 10%

Positive: 51%
Neutral: 43%
Negative: 6%

Positive: 35%
Neutral: 47%
Negative: 18%

Positive: 24%
Neutral: 59%
Negative: 17%

Positive: 22%
Neutral: 72%
Negative: 6%

Positive: 11%
Neutral: 80%
Negative: 10%

Positive: 10%
Neutral: 73%
Negative: 17%

“Top Brands” as reflected in this report is not necessarily indicative of how well brands are engaging and performing online today. Tracking share of voice, volume and sentiment is only the beginning. Measuring share of voice within relevant conversations sets the stage for something much more meaningful and profound. In addition to monitoring the activity of communities as well as identifying and connecting with influential voices within each network, will also factor into performance, affinity, and overall stature.

For example, with Analytic.ly, businesses can analyze other brands that are often referenced by their dedicated Twitter audience. And, if you’re seeking influential spokespersons, PeopleBrowsr can also reveal the influential and celebrity voices who are already reaching those discussing your brand or competitors today.

Previous Reports:

SuperBowl Ads Sentiment 2010
The 2009 State of the Airline Industry on Twitter
The Twitter Hollywood Report 2009
SXSW Sentiment 2009 vs. 2010

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Every year closes with summaries of the top stories as well the predictions for the year ahead. Heading into Twenty-Ten, I contributed to several prediction roundups including Junta42, ContactCenterWorld, ZDNet, among others. What I didn’t do however, is write about the endless predictions for the future of marketing, media, business, et al. While there were many excellent contributions, I focused on other writing priorities.

When I received an end of year 2009 report on the Top Social Computing Predictions for 2010 from Forrester Research, my attention shifted. Fueled by a timely post by Forrester’s newly appointed social analyst Augie Ray, “The Year that Marketing Dies,” I was compelled to read and share what I learned.

As Ray observes in his post:

The role of the new marketer will (edited):

- Focus on outbound messaging in addition to consult with sales, customer service, and human resources on how the brand must be communicated in every consumer interaction, every tweet, and every touchpoint

- Fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience beyond the imagination of creative messages

- Respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers, not plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar

- Look beyond the quantity of friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, and viewers to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent

- Listen to and engage customers one to one

- Build relationships and not campaigns

- Create experiences not impressions

- Earn media and not buy it

Augie’s post about the death and rebirth of marketing coincides with the release of the new Forrester report, but doesn’t represent nor summarize it officially.

Forrester’s Top Social Computing Predictions for 2010, written by Emily Riley, Nate Elliott, Josh Bernoff, Sean Corcoran, Augie Ray, and Emily Bowen, envision the rise of social computing this year, gaining credibility and accountability in the process.

To set the stage, Forrester’s use of “social computing” may seem confusing to those who usually associate the term with workflow, collaboration, and productivity.  In this case however, social computing is reflective of social media marketing. As such, in 2009 Forrester observed an increase of social media adoption by interactive marketers which was reflected in pilot programs and entry-level engagement and community-building strategies last year. In 2010, marketers will evolve beyond testing to contribute to the maturation of social media marketing resulting in the establishment of formal, not borrowed, budgets and the creation of an official workflow for listening and measurement.

As I believe, Social Media is not owned by any one department. The entire company will eventually socialize represented by each division that warrants an outward and participatory voice. Conversations always map to the activity that exists across multiple networks, spanning a multitude of subjects and potential outcomes. What’s important to realize is that the nucleus of every conversation represents the beginning of something independently important to the person voicing it as well as the theme it embodies.

Social Emerges as a Business Channel

Forrester Research predicts that interactive marketers will prove the value of social media marketing in 2010, leading with insight at the C-level and pushing deep metrics and relevant data into other departments. The goal is to establish long-term strategies, budgets, and measurement practices.

New Media Advisory Boards/Social Councils

In 2010, companies will officially establish social councils, or what I call New Media Advisory Boards, to attain budgets and power. While Forrester observed the creation of these advisory boards in 2009, this year, cross-functional teams will become pervasive, sharing ideas and exploring opportunities for social media. Although councils will emerge as an internal resource, their stature within most organizations will continue to be informal, thus relying on the budgets and capabilities of its members. However, their role is no less critical to the success of creating, deploying, managing, and measuring social media programming as well as governing the processes that bind them.

Over the years, I have participated in the creation of many Advisory Boards, internal and external, within small businesses and Fortune 500 companies as a way of facilitating collaboration, minimizing control debates and corresponding politics, securing buy-in across the organization, pooling budgets, and fortifying governance and accountability.  Members should include representatives from each division that requires a social presence as well as those who ensure that participating employees are denoted.

Making the Case

In 2010, we will move from a “ready, fire, aim” approach to social media to one of strategy and meaning. Marketers will now have to justify social marketing plans with actual business cases to obtain the resources necessary to execute effectively. Using a map such as The Conversation Prism will help brands discover and weigh relevant online interaction and their potential for formal response and programming.

From Information to Intelligence

Businesses that explored the social landscape in 2009 most likely employed one of the many listening tools available in order to monitor and document activity in popular social networks and blogs. Forrester believes that we will move from an era of listening to one of data mining, trend analysis, and ultimately action. Listening and observation will impact other departments including customer service, PR, among others in order to foster collaboration and cooperation between departments.

According to the report:

Product development, customer service, and upper management will begin to align with marketing and customer intelligence to create customer feedback councils as they focus on giving customers what they want, rather than what the company thinks they want.

I believe that in 2010, the valuable insight that emerges from a formal research program will also channel through to affected divisions, persons of interest, and decision makers to evolve the company into a fully adaptive entity that lives and breathes awareness in order to earn relevance.

Measurement

Metrics will encompass greater significance beyond the number of friends, followers, views, and clickthroughs. Forrester reveals that marketers don’t “think” they’re very good at measuring social media today, rating their own efforts at 4.5 out of 10. As the need for accountability rises in conjunction with the creation and employment of more strategic initiatives, measurement is the connection between present and future activity.

Forrester notes that a silver bullet does not yet exist, nor should it. Social Media is a dynamic medium and the mold that’s currently employed by businesses including the creation of a Facebook Fan Page, profiles on Twitter, etc, quickly emerged as standards without first assessing why their initial creation was necessary.

Metrics are elusive without first exploring the objectives and matching social programming and engagement to help deliver against them. Forrester recommends a systematic approach in order to identify the right metrics for their social media initiatives. They should tie to businesses objectives as well without emulating the traditional sales and top-down marketing voices of old.

Take caution however, when determining if out-of-the-box formulas or “scores” will help measure success or progress.

This is why I implore all brand managers and interactive marketers to STOP reviewing existing case studies and social media success stories because many of them were forged and cultivated without the definition of strategic business- and industry-specific metrics including increased revenue, customer loyalty, advocacy, and market share. Measuring sentiment analysis, would-be referrals, and increases in share of voice are entry-level techniques that do not necessarily capture the potential of socialized media channels. Tie metrics to that of action and trackable activity. For example, it’s not about “would you recommend this product or brand” it’s about driving and assessing whether or not someone “did recommend this…” and if so, what happened next.

We must focus beyond positive and negative horizons. We grow by enlivening the neutral and the negative commentary through analysis. Reading the commentary to feel the true state of the market and surface opportunities to incite measurable activity towards a desired direction. Business metrics and key performance indicators are also worthy of integration into new media. Dell continues to serve as an exemplary model.

Twitter

Forrester gazes into the crystal ball and sees one of two outcomes for Twitter by the end of 2010, either it will become profitable and/or it will get acquired. Perhaps the report was published prior to the release of financial information concerning the Bing and Google search deals, but the economics of Twitter actually proved beneficial for the company’s bottom line. At the end of 2009, Twitter reportedly earned a profit and is expected to do so again in 2010 with the release of commercial products and services in addition to an official advertising channel.

Is Twitter an acquisition target? With a $1 billion valuation, potential suitors are finite. Remember, at the height of its boom, MySpace sold for $580 million. In another example, YouTube sold to Google for $1.65 billion. As Twitter is a cultural and social phenomenon unlike any network before it, perhaps Twitter’s best play is to start making strategic business decisions to remove itself from the targets of would be acquirers in order to grow the Twitter ecosystem, along with its loyal user base, organically. Don’t get me wrong however. In 2010, money will get thrown at Ev, Biz, Jack and team out of our view…but how, when and why will have yet to be seen.

Facebook

Privacy concerns continue to plague Facebook and Forrester sees this as an ongoing challenge. As such, Facebook is expected to protect its own interests by helping users protect theirs as well through the release of new tools that offer more intuitive ways to limit the visibility of their photos, updates, and data to different sets of followers.

As a user, I’m not sure where I stand on Facebook privacy. In general, I view online media equally. Therefore I employ a sweeping rule, assume that anything shared online, even if it’s through email, becomes discoverable when, where, and how you least expect it. Knowing this, proceed to shape and cultivate your online persona, your way.

Stowe Boyd suggests we embrace an era of “publicy” while Erick Schonfeld and Andrew Keen believe, “Instead of making the private public, we will make the public private.” When public is the default, you deliberately select what to keep private instead of the other way around.”

Forrester suggests that new privacy controls and tools make users elusive and difficult to target. It’s absolutely true. As a marketer, Facebook is indeed a silo and its limited interaction potential for brands also impedes genuine engagement across the network. While widgets, apps, groups, live video, and Fan Pages provide the ability for brands to attract friends and fans, Facebook does not facilitate the ability for a brand to maintain a profile or benefit from the advantages inherent in profiles within the network today. While yes, a brand can host a fan page, it cannot interact with users as the brand outside of the page. Unfortunately, in order to do so, fan page admins would need to interact using their personal accounts, which blurs the line between personal and professional engagement and ultimately dilutes the personal social graph.

While this isn’t a prediction, it is a public request for fan pages to resemble “profiles,” providing brands with the ability to truly interact in and outside the page as a branded entity and with the potential to earn more than “5,000″ friends (note: not fans).

As real-time search becomes pervasive, Facebook will need to carefully ensure that content appears in dedicated search engines. Many experts will testify that Twitter gained rapid adoption when Twitter search provided a lens into the activity and conversations of its users. Prior to the New Year, real-time Web search engine Collecta introduced the ability to search conversations and content in MySpace – for the first time. Perhaps this move will actually help MySpace matter once again.

Mobile

Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et al, the 2010 prediction report could benefit from specific insight and updates into an overdue move towards an open Web. Facebook’s hiring of David Recordan and Google’s hiring of Joseph Smarr represent hope and peak curiosity. Forrester does state however, that incompatible mobile devices and siloed social applications will shatter the social experience.

While the move towards Data Portability, OAuth and Open Social are promising, the reality is that users maintain multiple profiles across an exhaustive list of social networks today. And individual portfolios of social presences expand and contract with the demise, acquisition or introduction of services.

Our attention span is thinning and the “dream” of a common identity is not, according to Forrester, expected to materialize in 2010. Forrester predicts that our social graphs will in fact grow in distance as mobile social networking becomes increasingly pervasive.

As a result, Forrester emphasizes the need for brands to focus resources and budgets:

Marketers, already bamboozled by social media and with limited budgets, will be forced to make choices. Staff a Twitter feed or focus on Facebook? Having done so, they’ll then have to worry about how those choices squeeze through the tiny interface of a mobile device — and about testing and maintaining multiple device experiences. Look for marketers to pick a set of tools — say Twitter and iPhones — and spend 2010 looking carefully at other platforms to ensure they haven’t chosen poorly.

Brands don’t need to be everywhere, only where customers and influencers communicate and seek information today and tomorrow. It’s how we compete for current market share as well as improve our faculty to compete for the future.

In late 2009, I actively explored the ideas of the Golden Triangle and Three Screens, which represent the fusion of social, real-time and mobile as they connected portable devices, desktops, mobile phones, and ultimately TVs.

With the proliferation of smart devices lead by the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm Pre, users will find their interaction with existing and new location-based social networks (Loopt, FourSquare, Gowalla) and their respective social graphs increasingly mobile. As such, interaction becomes further distributed… And brands are already taking notice.

However, geo-local social networking and augmented reality are strangely missing from Forrester’s 2010 social computing predictions.

2010 represents a market for intelligent mobile marketing in addition to the incredible opportunity rife within appstores dedicated to each platform.

As Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, recently stated in the San Francisco Chronicle, We [Loopt] want to use location to bridge the gap between the virtual and real world. That’s where…the technology is the most powerful.”

Geo-local networking represents the connection between online and offline, bringing people and businesses together based on location and interests.

Whether it’s through reviews, mobile coupons, free or discounted products and services, the opportunities for consumers, marketers and advertisers are abundant.

We’re already realizing the power of connecting people to nearby friends, restaurants, bars, stores, events, and now special offers. And, when combined with augmented reality, we can literally see the bridge between the virtual and real world.

Yelp’s Monocle is an early, but exceptional example…

Augmented Reality will benefit mobile and desktop users alike, providing brands with a platform to engage consumers through immersive activity. For example, Rayban’s augmented reality application (click virtual mirror) allows customers to virtually try on sunglasses before making a purchase decision.

Additional marketing examples of Augmented Reality applications are viewable on Mashable.

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What follows is my opening address to the Social Media World Forum…

As we look ahead to 2010 in the world of social media, we should first stop to appreciate how far we’ve come in this journey to new found relevance and presence.

Social media served as a great equalizer. The technology and the corresponding networks that freely connected us, democratized the ability to publish and share content, weave more meaningful relationships, as well reset the ecosystem for establishing and wielding influence.

Perhaps most notably, Social networks made the world a much smaller place. As such, it also set the stage for the emergence of a new caliber and genre of influencers and communities that support their mission and purpose. On any given subject, these authoritative networks can incite change and galvanize action to govern, change, and direct market behavior.

The power lies in the ability for anyone to find and forge connections with those who share passions, interests, beliefs, and aspirations. Our ability to form new ties online expands beyond friends, family, and associates. We now weave contextual networks, bonds that are adjoined through our ideas and representations.

But just because we have access to the tools doesn’t necessarily entitle us to reach out to customers, influencers, and stakeholders. Simply because we believe we have something to say doesn’t guarantee that anyone is ready or willing to listen. Nor does it mean what we have to say automatically entitles us to a ready audience.

Social Media aside, the act of communicating with someone is shaped by its intentions and interpreted by its purpose and design. In other words, the opportunity to participate and engage is a privilege. And, this privilege is rewarded with connections and community for those who realize that the minimum ante to engage is value.

At the very minimum, Social Media revealed the people who define our audiences, giving us a glimpse of not only who defines are marketplace and landscape of influence, but also what they think, what they need to know, and what they’re seeking. It allowed us to truly establish bridges between people and information in ways that elicited more favorable responses while investing and cultivating, engagement, loyalty and trust.

The fear of losing control of our message and brand transformed into the realization that we never had the level of control we assumed.

Social Media didn’t invent conversations, it only surfaced them – giving us the ability to identify opportunities to steer and change perception – and learn, adapt, and improve in the process. The power of perception has never been more prominent.

The art of listening and monitoring serves as the passage for identifying relevant voices and the communities that host interaction. More importantly, the powers of observation grant us perspective. If we are truly taking heed of this activity, we can’t help but feel the sentiment and emotions that govern and impact our online ecosystems and societies. In the process, we learn everything necessary to contribute value to the dialogue and to the greater community overall.

We now feel, hear, and see the world through the eyes of those we wish to reach and inspire. We’ve not only earned the right to participate, but also earned a genuine sense of empathy along the way. This is the only way we can truly contribute and steer the direction of our markets. We must take an active role in its definition as a leader and also through the democratized leadership that stems from collaboration and community empowerment.

This isn’t only a two-way street, it’s a road paved with mutually beneficial interaction to ensure that these roads attract meaningful traffic.

Individually and collectively, we are forever students of new media and our work is only just beginning.

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