2010 marks the year women's voices will carry greater influence in social media

On January 1, Hajj E. Flemings, a personal brand strategist, founder of Brand Camp University, and author of The Brand YU Life Book, posted a video blog on YouTube that outlined his 2010 personal branding predictions. Flemings’ second prediction was the growth of female personal brands and voices in social media conversations and conferences.  He predicted that as a result, mommy bloggers and groups such as BlogHer will have greater influence. He also made two comments many women will love: “it is a great time to be a woman” and “a great time to be web 2.0 savvy.”

Black Web Media's CEO and founder Angela Benton and Black Web 2.0's managing editor Robin Caldwell represent the type of web savvy women Flemings discusses in his video blog.  Benton established Black Web 2.0 as an online publication for African Americans interested in technology and new media in 2007.  Under her leadership, Black Web 2.0 has developed a strong reputation for analyzing emerging web trends and their application to web properties targeting African American communities and culture.  Caldwell's diverse portfolio of skills and expertise as a public relations consultant and founder of The J Standard Media Group, LLC, Huffington Post Technology blogger, and advocate for minority representation in new media and technology, is the perfect complement to Benton's expertise and the Black Web 2.0 team.

Benton ended 2009 by sharing her 2010 web predictions on Black Web 2.0. They included her insights about the state of blogs.

“If you got sick of seeing Blog-like sites being mimicked on your favorite magazine site you may as well go ahead and grab your brown paper bag. It will continue in 2010. There will actually be a shift where Big Media wants to put on a New Media face, New Media will look less like blogs and more like Blogazines. Blogazine being much cooler than an e-zine but a mix between a blog and traditional magazine site. Opportunity: Don’t focus on just building a great content site, focus on building a great brand and you will be a contender.” 

Brenna Ehrlich, a writer for Mashable and co-founder of Stuff Hipsters Hate blog, also represents one of the female voices growing in social media influence.  Ehrlich recently wrote about TrendsSpotting Market Research’s 2010 Social Media Influencers - Trend Predictions in 140 Characters for Mashable.  TrendSpotting's research featured 2010 predictions by women in social media we should listen to in the new year.  They include:
 

• Angela Connor, a journalist, community strategist, and author of 18 Rules of Community Engagement  - “Online branded communities will out perform Facebook fan pages and gain increased popularity. Employees will find themselves facing strict social media guidelines banning FB, YouTube or both.”
• Marta Kagan, the managing director of U.S. Espresso Brand Infiltration - "Business will finally admit that social media ain’t some fad for kids and B-list movie stars. Realtime reviews will scare the pants off many a brand and foster a new ‘radical-beta’ mindset.”
• Charlene Li, the co-author of Groundswell and founder of the Altimeter Group - "Social media in 2010 will cease being the shiny new object and instead become part of the everyday lexicon of business. The technology will begin to fade into the background so that people can focus on the relationships that are created because of the technologies, not the technologies themselves.”
• Ravit Lightenberg, the founder and chief strategist of UStrategy.com - "Women will rule social media. Social media will move into new domains. ROI will be measured and it will matter.”
• Tamar Weinberg, Mashable’s Community and Marketing Manager - "Content will be more widely dispersed, especially across platforms as phone are getting smarter.“
• Dr. Taly Weiss, Trendspotting.com's CEO and head of Research - “Blogs will continue to flourish as people realize micro-blogging needs a home-base.”

The women mentioned above are members of  a growing social media sisterhood that deserves our attention. Let's make a resolution for the next decade and actively seek out, listen to, and support more female voices in social media.

Copyright 2010 by Madelyn C. Leeke. All Rights Reserved.

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Author Bio: Ananda Kiamsha Madelyn Leeke is a lawyer turned author, social media strategist, creativity coach, blogger, podcaster, artist, and yoga teacher. She currently serves as the D.C. Social Media Examiner for Examiner.com. Her first Internet encounter occurred when she heard AOL's "you've got mail" in 1995. It was love at first click! A year later, she began working for The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software firm, where she established an intellectual property protection program for the firm's Internet products and services. Leeke served as an online content contributor for NetNoir.com's Gospel and Women's Channels from 2001 to 2002. She launched her first blog in 2005 and used social media tools to market her books, Love's Troubadours - Karma: Book One (2007) and That Which Awakens Me: A Creative Woman's Poetic Memoir of Self-Discovery (2009). She is currently writing Sisterhood, the Blog: Soundbytes from the 21st Century Women's Online Revolution (2010). Leeke enjoys attending conferences such as Blogging While Brown, Fem 2.0, BlogHer, Blogalicious, She's Geeky DC, and Latinos in Social Media. She also loves teaching yoga for computer users at Blogalicious, She's Geeky DC, and Latinos in Social Media. Her blogs include Author Ananda Leeke and kg yoga life practices. Click here to follow Leeke on Twitter. Watch Ananda Leeke Live!, a UStream channel that features author chats about her books. Take her online yoga classes on Stickam.com and MomTV. For more information, contact Leeke at kiamshaleeke@yahoo.com.