Social media has given power to the people, and with it, your consumers now have the ability to publicly share their experiences about your company, your customer service and your products online. (Sometimes positive, and sometimes negative.) Conversations that once took place inside coffee shops and bars are now public record across all sorts of digital channels.

If you’re currently participating in the “listening” basics (tracking mentions of your company name in Google News Alerts, Google BlogSearch, Technorati, etc.) you will immediately find out when a customer starts talking about your business within social media channels such as message boards, Twitter, or blogs. Whether these conversations are positive or negative, you can — and should — dip into the conversation stream with them.

Yet, the larger an organization is, the less time they can devote to following up on every single online reference or mention. So how do you discriminate?

First, check out the user who is posting the information. Let’s say the environment is a message board, and the user is very active within that space. He/she has over 3,000 posts. This is somebody you want to pay attention to, and potentially follow up with. Even within self-organizing communities like user forums, leaders (influencers) still emerge.

Now, say there are 10 blogs that have posted glowing reviews about your product or service, but you only have time for a few “thank you” follow-ups in their comments area. Do some research into who the bloggers are first. Determine their reach and influence. How big of a voice do they have? Are their readers actively engaged with the content? Are the readers leaving comments? If you see a lot of “Comments: 0″ you may want to pass.

There are billions of conversations happening right now on the web — some of them about your company. Depending on your organization’s size, developing an ability to filter through the stream of information, prune, and identify key influencers will be vital to your social media strategy.