What's the Future of Business?

People talk about your business. In restaurants, on transcontinental flights and in the aisles of big-box retailers, customers share experiences on social media in real time. Depending on how they react to the experiences you offer, consumers can become your brand ambassadors or dangerous detractors. Cultivate more ambassadors by using social media platforms not as newfangled billboards, but as a way to connect with people, learn their priorities and values, and offer experiences they will praise. Digital strategist Brian Solis argues that you must engage in a new kind of 24-hour marketing to reach this new digitally “connected customer.” Transferring traditional marketing to interactive media isn’t enough. Instead, “design the experience” people have with your brand online so that every minute results in positive web commentary. Solis conveys the urgency of creating these encounters, though he doesn’t go into a lot of hands-on detail about how to do it. Most of his discussion stays on a theoretical level, and his few examples of best practices are short. Still, getAbstract recommends his conceptual arguments to marketers and customer service reps who aren’t digital natives as an excellent intro to a fresh marketing paradigm.