Brand identity and the gatekeepers to those brands are changing, but that doesn’t have to be a fear mongering statement. What has me particularly excited about social media is the open and accessible nature of communications and interactions between people, and as a consumer and a marketer – brands and customers.

We are seeing the breaking down of the barriers between internal and external customers, the decision makers and people behind the products and their customers. In my personal experience, having the CEO of a company I am considering purchasing from personally contacting me, really has a big influence on my confidence in the product and my loyalty towards the brand.

The most interesting example came to me today when I found an bug on Guy Kawasaki’s site Alltop. I thought it was rather weird so tweeted it and in less than 5 minutes I got a response from Guy.

Now for those that don’t know, Guy is a famous author and a marketing superstar that was an integral part of the Macintosh marketing team at Apple in 1980s and written many best sellers on marketing and entrepreneurship. He is one of the more prominent (and infamous) users on twitter and follows and is followed by over 119,000 people.

Quite recently he was criticised by many for disclosing that he did not manage the twitter account himself and bloggers across the world criticised him for losing the ‘personal touch’.

With this in mind, without directing it towards him I sent out a message and I was surprised with his response

There is something special about company and a brand that prioritises listening to his customers to the extent of addressing the concerns of a single customer.

I have had great experiences from several senior execs that are clearly passionate and proactive in representing their brand. Marcel LeBrun from Radian6, Mike McDerment from Freshbooks and Mark Ruddock from Viigo, have gone out of their way to cater to the customers behind the product and as a result have earned both a loyal customer and a brand advocate (I frequently have people asking if I work for Radian6 or Freshbooks).

The key thing to learn here is that the value in social media is often not in the ability to push but rather to listen.

Yes we can push information to thousands but the greatest value is found in the ability to identify individual voices. Not only to find them but to engage, converse and build a relationships on a one-to-one basis no matter how large or tall the organisational tree is.

People that win at at social media leverage one-to-one relationship building on a larger scale. Technology enables the CEO to speak to his customers as if he is the guy at the counter of your local hardware store and find that irate customer and turn them around.

In a world where technology can make your organisation as nimble as the family owned corner store, how human is your brand?