Image via Wikipedia

The countdown to the start of a new year gets all the press. But there’s another one. One that people talk about all year round. It’s the countdown to the moment you say to yourself, “I’ve been putting this off long enough, it’s time to…”

Now all of us will finish that sentence in many different ways – some personal, some professional.

If you’ve arrived at this, my own little online “Time’s Square” [sic], and are still reading this far down into the post, I’d like to think the virtual ball has dropped for you already. (Happy New Year!!!) You’ve taken another step into the sea of online social (or new) media gatherings that are happening all around us where people are communicating in dot-com venues whose best uses may have yet to be uncovered.

What matters is that you see it coming. So before you wave a dismissive hand at “all that social media stuff,” remember that a lot of other innovations began with a question mark and then evolved into indispensable tools that help us communicate more effectively and/or productively.

Remember there were telegrams before text messages, shortwaves before satellites and projectors before plasmas, to say nothing of where technology has yet to take us still.

So when it comes to social media, you can close your eyes to it. Or you can be the first one in your neighborhood to have a color TV, or a microwave, or a VCR, or surround sound, or a laser disc, or a web cam, or a blog, or a solar-paneled roof…

And the cost of “acquisition” in this case, is nothing but your time and attention (since you clearly already have the computer and the Internet connection).

So tell me, where will you take your social media question mark in 2009?

I invite you to post your Top Three Social Media Goals for the New Year right here. Whether it’s as simple as setting up a LinkedIn page or subscribing to this blog. Write it down. Make it happen. And we’ll check back in on each other next year to see how far we’ve come. (Even if I have to pick up the “oh-so-outdated” telephone to do so.)

Thank you 2008, you finally gave New Media a name