Social Media Is Defining The New Rules Of Engagement

Thousands of people today are blogging, twittering, making friends on Facebook…

We may not fully appreciate this new emerging force on the internet, but we indeed have already embraced it and even gave it a name- “Social Media”.

This new force is changing the Internet and is writing new rules of engagement, if you wish, for a successful business. And the new rules are rather simple- transparency and honesty.

In my opinion today businesses and inviduals have three basic choices they can make:

• Embrace thins new movement and follow the new rules. This some times will require to face and engage your worst critics. Most of the criticism out there can be reduced to “this item sucks” or “this is the worst wireless provider”? But if face your critics in an honorable and honest way, trying to improve your products, chances are you will disarm your critics and maybe even turn some of the them into your best allies. Just think about it, most of the times companies are criticized over the type of services or products they offer.
• Do nothing about it. It looks like many companies out there are so afraid to step out of their shell. The fear is so great that it keeps them “frozen”. These are the companies that we will not remember two years from now.
• And the of course you can chose to ignore the emerging social media or/and continue to be a complete asshole as far as transparency and honesty are concerned.

You are probably looking in between the lines trying to figure out if the next few paragraphs will follow with the examples. The answer is no. I had different goal in mind…

We have a golden opportunity today. With today technology and the Internet, we have an unprecedented opportunity for promoting our brand. On opportunity that was not available to many just short ten years ago. Unless you and I take on this opportunity and just do two things, be transparent and honest, we are wasting our time and other peoples patience.