2011 is the year of commitment and maturity. Businesses, which invested in social media in between 2008-10, will now be thinking what’s next? How do we progress? And new comers can experiment confidently by learning from pioneering brands and businesses.

Goals, whether they’re building on foundations or starting afresh, will require adequate research and measurement. However, maturity doesn’t equate to a slow-down in the development of platforms and tools: new social networks keep popping up, existing platforms evolve, and the tools used to monitor are adapting to support more complex demands.

A myriad of tools, technologies and measurement techniques now exist. What’s changed? What’s important?

First, prior to any predictions, I must clarify the difference between social media research and social media measurement. Social media monitoring tools are akin to Swiss Army knives because, within an organisation, they can be utilised by NPD, management teams and marketing departments. Confusion arises when different business units are presented with many metrics and new research tools.

Research activities vary from department to department; generally research teams are engaged in larger, longer-term projects, which involve various methods of qualitative research in order to understand issues such as customer experience, market positioning and trends.

Over last three years Market Sentinel have witnessed a growing trend in business departments, outside of marketing teams, using social media monitoring tools to complement existing, qualitative research techniques. Quantitative insights, delivered though sampling social media (user generated content), help to provide greater context to qualitative research.

Of course, the increased adoption of new research methods will not replace traditional research methods. The application of Text Analytics technologies are helping analysts to understand key themes and sentiments within of offline data, in the same way that social media monitoring tools analyse user generated content and web pages.

Priorities for marketers and community managers will include activities that require real time insights as opposed to lengthy studies conducted by researchers. Maintaining mature communities and social graphs, built over the last two years, will require consistent engagement and this can only be achieved by understanding what’s important to your community now, today and this week.

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A combination of tools, which easily analyse Google Keyword trends and the real time structure and context of conversations, will ultimately help brands to become more relevant to their communities. Understanding key themes in conversations, common #tags used and key people across any given topic will provide marketers with the insights they need to stay relevant in real time .

Relevancy is not only vital for maintaining existing social networks, it’s also vital for engaging connectors. According to Forrester “Mass Connectors” are the bridging nodes on social networks as they have broad interests and relationships across many communities. Connectors – or digital carrier pigeons as I like to call them – help to spread ideas and content.

The growing importance of connectors will result in marketers making efforts to engage them, alongside influencers, during 2011. Identifying connectors will require analysing different social networks and selecting the key connectors that sit between them.