Power To The People

Really interesting article in Fast Company this month. The article is titled “The Network Unbound.”

The article discusses the power of the new collaborative environment that blogging started a few years ago. The following quote is the most powerful part:

From the article:

The emergent power of those collective judgments shows up in a 2006 survey pf “opinion leaders” by Edelman, the huge international PR firm, which found that 68% of respondents rated “a person like yourself or your peer” as the most credible spokesperson about a company. That number has tripled since 2003. What’s more, 36% of respondents said that if they don’t like a company, they go online to say so. And a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey released in January found that 60 million Americans consulted the Internet for help with major life decisions, including big ticket items. When it comes to information, the balance of power has truly shifted to the consumer.

If you think being on the web, or engaging your users isn’t important, you are not getting the feedback that you need nor are you enabling the growth that can happen when a community gets behind what you are doing.

Being able to tell your story to people that want to hear it and that will repeat it is what today’s web is all about. It doesn’t matter if you are an online store or brick and mortar. The web is how people are talking about your story. Whether you like it or not. It’s time to get involved.