Twitter is the first communication mechanism I've been a part of that actually helps me build new relationships without any preexisting knowledge (or trust) with the other party.   Much hoopla has been made about the microformat of Twitter and how it enables new forms of communication, but the amazing power of Twitter comes from it's ability to allow people to connect and develop new relationships seemingly out of nothing.

My Twitter relationships may lack the depth of trust that I have in the "Friend" model (in some cases :) of Facebook, LinkedIn, or email but they're still relationships that I've come to value and that provide me with a sense of community.

How this happened surprised me.  I had sporadically used Twitter for about a year but wasn't finding it very useful until I started using the search feature of Twitter to discover people that I shared a common interest with.  I've talked about this in the past but in a nutshell to get an action (or Twitter usage in my case) requires the following...

• Find people that share a common interest, motivation, or problem.  This commonality is the building blocks of relationships (aka community).
• When relationships form around a shared interest excitement is generated from the freshness of new ideas and finding people that share your passion.
• Excited users are users that take action and in my case that was Twitter usage.

In essence by discovering people that shared my common interest for open source, community, and collaboration I discovered pockets of  users that shared my passion, and by Following these people and interacting with them I developed new relationships that drove my adoption and usage of Twitter.

It then dawned on me that Twitter wasn't about micro communication it was about Macro Community and bringing people together around the things that matter most to them, in essence a ginormous community organizer.

I must admit, I'm excited at the opportunity for community that Twitter has created and if you're interested in joining in on the fun you can find me on Twitter as @emcconne

My how things have changed!  Just a few years ago companies and organizations could buy multi-million dollar television ads and make a mediocre product successful.  People trusted companies to produce great products and would rush out to buy the latest and greatest gizmo because they knew it was going to work as promised.  Unfortunately, most companies violated that trust by producing crappy products or products that didn't solve user needs.  Fortunately for us this is changing thanks to inventive companies that are taking advantage of social media and it's ability to let them talk directly to the customer.  Companies that talk directly to their user communities and produce products using more customer focused agile methodologies are finding success through LISTENING. What a novel concept, talk to your customer and incorporate their feedback in everything you do.

21st century marketing is about connecting people together around your product and creating Fans.  In this new era of connectedness companies that understand this are going to be successful... very successful.  It's not about making a company's products look good in some contrived tv or radio advertisement.  It's about making your customers look remarkable.  Customers that look remarkable become Fans and fans will carry your message into their networks, not because you've made a great product but because you've made them successful.  This should be everyone's goal in today's connected world.

Today companies and organizations of all types need to ask themselves a simple question...

"How can I make my customers look remarkable?"

The customer role can take many forms based on the type of organization you're in but the essence of the question is the same regardless.  What are you going to do today to help someone else be successful?  The only way to effectively answer this question is by opening up an ongoing dialog with your organization's users and constantly asking for input.  This is where organizations that understand community and  social media will have a HUGE advantage over even the largest of companies.  Now go find someone to talk to :)

There's a lot of work going on by various companies to build better 'listening posts' for the huge stream of social media that is flooding into companies and communities. There are a plethora of listening tools available, such as Radian6, Buzzlogic Insight, Sentiment Metrics, etc. More recently, Microsoft has gotten into the game with a project they call 'Looking Glass'.

While details are still sketchy, Looking Glass appears to hook into (and lock into) other Microsoft products, and even do some analysis of trends & stats to automate certain actions. At this point, I diverge from the popular opinion that social media stats, ROI, etc. are the end-all and be-all of the social media world. I've argued this point before, but I'd like to reiterate that all of the metrics gathered as part of social media/community really do require a person (be it a community manager or social media sherpa) who can perform the 'Information Synthesis' necessary to build an actionable plan in response to the flood of social media input. We even have a section in our recently released Community Management Cookbook related to this thought. To wit:

"Community health can NOT be determined by simple numbers. It takes a community manager, or several, to read through conversations."

For example, a community could have only a few members (relative to some 'mega-community'), but the conversation/engagement/work produced might dwarf the mega-community. Raw membership numbers might present a skewed picture in this case which could lead to a decision maker thinking they need to shut down a productive community. With the stats, plus analysis by a human, a more educated decision could be made in this case. By the way, there is always the risk of over analyzing the data, and I agree with Jack Repenning, CollabNet CTO, on this point. Providing both the raw metrics, and a reasoned analysis, is the best we can hope to do, but clearly, one without the other doesn't benefit anyone.

Once the analysis is combined with the numbers, the responsibility for a response to something in the social media stream can be farmed out to the necessary department or individual to deal with appropriately. However, the action item may be to adjust an internal process or business decision in reaction to the stimuli received from the social media feed.

There is enough inherent 'squishiness' in social media/community management that you really have to rely on the best social media analysis engine (the one between a talented person's ears) to make sense of what the metrics are saying. Trying to automate thinking in an attempt to scale the social media listening/response function is doomed to failure if your goal as a company/community is to actually do something useful with what the crowd is telling you, and to be perceived as an organization that understands how social media benefits you.

Bottom line - statistics are but one tool in the arsenal of an effective community/social media strategy.

Businesses and governments spend a lot of time, effort, and money attempting to do two things with social media: a) block it completely, or b) allow it, but attempt to monopolize it as a sales channel. Usually in the latter case, it eventually comes down to that dreaded three-letter acronym: ROI. Yes, 'return on investment' - how does allowing my employees to be part of this burgeoning new networked world help my business sell more things or make my people more productive?

The answer is... it probably won't (at least not directly), which might come as a shock to most business and government people who have been 'sold' on social media. You see, I think that way too much focus goes into trying to quantify the benefits of social media, when in point of fact, they are almost impossible to measure. How do you measure the productivity gain of having your talented employees asking questions, sharing ideas, and yes, occasionally ranting on Facebook or Twitter? Answer: You can't (directly). However, when one of your employees seeks information on a particularly tough problem they are having, or asks for a contact into a potential new business venture, and gets multiple responses (some of which are very good), there is invaluable knowledge transfer happening! Chris Brogan had a great take on social media metrics in his latest blog post, to wit: "...Make the numbers matter to the business, not to what social media does and doesn’t cover." He's right on the money here - instead of making up metrics specific to social media, focus on the outcomes that you are already trying to measure for brand outreach or worker productivity. Trying to directly measure social media ROI is a dubious proposition at best.

The Open Source world has learned the lessons of 'social media' well, even if they aren't directly using Facebook or Twitter (and in some cases, they are!). Social media makes it easier for 'communities' to build up (or tear down) dynamically and provides a near real-time professional zeitgeist. Yes, I know, I've used that description in previous blog posts, but it really is the most apt word that can be used for what social media, properly used, can bring to the party.

Let's look at an analogy to an 'older' technology - email. How do you measure the benefit of having your employees able to email anyone (yes, including Grandma Fern for her cookie recipe)? I don't believe you can measure this, but considering that not having email access at most companies is pretty much like not having electricity, we've clearly gotten past the conceptual hump on that technology. To those critics who will argue that Twitter/Facebook, etc. take too much time away from employee productivity, I'd have to agree, IF you don't do a good enough job of screening your potential employees. If you hire people who can't be trusted to professionally manage their time in the social networking arena, unfettered email access is surely going to be a problem as well.

Let's focus for a minute on the monopolization of social media for the marketing/sales side. I'm not at all suggesting that these avenues aren't a good option for sales/marketing activities. However, if that is the sole reason you are using them as a company, you'd probably be better off spending your money on traditional advertising campaigns. The benefit you get from being involved in Twitter or Facebook as a company is that your brand is seen as more 'human,' and you get a new way to interact with your current and potential user base in a two-way fashion, as opposed to pushing 'messaging' at them. People who are already part of these social networks expect a conversation with your company, not another one-way push of sales information.

So, does all of this mean you and your employees shouldn't be a part of this new frontier? Absolutely not - there is clear evidence, albeit anecdotal, that participation by companies and employees in social media improves knowledge transfer and overall brand awareness. Given that the 'investment' is mostly in time (the technology piggybacks on your existing network infrastructure), and if your staff are professionals, you can expect to have happier - and generally more knowledgeable - employees, as well as customers.

Remember, business analysts at one time thought email was going to be the downfall of the business world, but it has instead become a critical tool. While not there yet, social media systems as tools are well on their way to following suit.