Social media is here, whether you like it or not. It’s changing perceptions about business, giving individual people powerful voices of change and impact (for better or worse), and it’s compelling companies to change their mindset about how they get their message out to the people that are relevant to their business.

This Microsoft Advertising video, “The Break Up”, shows the changing mindset of consumers and its affect on advertisers – thus making it a very clever example of why doing business the same old way isn’t going to cut it any more.

Shorter attention spans, information overload, the abundance of mobile technology, and our need for instant, personalized information means that the social web has massive power to connect people, to resolve issues, and to share relevant information faster.

If I’ve blogged it once I’ve blogged it a hundred times, social media is all about relationships. Once upon a time, we took our customers out on the golf course or conducted business over dinner. We spent hours on phone calls and later emails, all with the purpose of forging stronger ties between our customers, prospects, and the people within our business. People want to do business with people they know and trust. Social networking isn’t much different than networking offline, it’s all about relationships

So what’s changed? Social media has taken geography out of the equation: now we can reach people across the globe, or get local and zero in on the people in our backyard. We can chat over Twitter, have hangouts on G+, share photos on Facebook and tell our stories on blogs – all while involving lots of other people in our conversations. We’re still humans, connecting across communication channels and the social web is helping us find the people who want to know us and stay connected better than ever before.

Let’s face it, customer expectations have changed.  In order to remain relevant, how your business interacts with your customers online has to change too.

Has your business begun to integrate social media or are you still making the case for its use? How are you using social media for business? What are some of your favorite examples of videos, blog posts or books that make a great case for social media use?  Go ahead and download our latest Ebook, Social Media Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Plan to Prepare Your Company, to help you overcome cultural/company obstacles, adopt social media and get everyone working together.