Simon Mainwaring

Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire, engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal.

In the coming years, if not sooner, social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility – and, I suggest, move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.

The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not, this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause.

What today’s business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically, socially, ethically, and morally.

Integrate purpose into your for-profit business model through a long term commitment to a cause that is aligned with your core values and those of your community.

Business practices and how we treat the planet are also in desperate need of re-humanization.

In the social business marketplace, brands that hope to build loyal and growing communities do so most effectively when they demonstrate their core values and allow a community to build and engage around it.

As a speaker, business leader or marketer of any type, the onus is now on each of us to become equally capable of communicating very personally with a seemingly endless number of people connected by social technologies.

In today’s social business marketplace Facebook is one of the best places for nonprofits to be discovered and connect with a larger audience on the basis of shared values. So to get started, a non-profit should launch a Facebook page and invite your existing real world community to connect your cause and their networks.

The leverage and influence social media gives citizens are rapidly spreading into the business world.