I believe in people, and I believe we can do great things on our own, but joining together with others, with single individuals, in organisations, in groups and in communities, that’s when we can start to see the potential for real and lasting change – in ourselves, in groups we care about (families, friends, organisations, businesses, societies). Joining together gives us ‘leverage’. We start to see strengths in ourselves and in others, and in the possibility to put those strengths together to make small and big changes to make our world a much better place in which we can all live, work, relax and enjoy.

That’s one of the main reasons I use social media. In the past 12 months I have made some new friends, and strengthened some existing ties, and part of this has been through regularly updating my LinkedIn page and through tweeting (@paulineroche and @RnRworks). I also encourage and support others to use social media.

There are powerful messages in these streams, and it’s important to hear many voices from a diverse range of backgrounds. My work gives me access to people from all walks of life and I want to hear more of those voices in social media. The ones I hear already are great – that’s why I connect to them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter – but I know there could be more.

This brings me back to ‘leverage’. Once more of those voices are out there on LinkedIn and Twitter, we can start to see who knows who, and who would like to know who else so we can ‘use’ each other (in the best sense) to improve the world for all of us. I look forward to hearing more from new people in 2013 and beyond, and helping as many as I can to gain the leverage we can all use to help each other.