There are many articles on the internet about how to help others "get" social media.

With no direct way of measuring ROI in dollars, not every company understands that social media has changed the face of marketing and public relations.

However, I think that especially in a down economy, this is the age of the customer; and social media is a powerful tool to be able to reach your customers and allow them to reach you. I think social media is particularly important for customer service-oriented businesses.

Don't know why? Buy something. As a customer, I think it's easy to see why I love social media. If I get good service, I have no problem telling the world about it on the internet. If a company sees what I've said and says, "Hey, thanks for the love." I think it's awesome that they're listening. If I don't like something, I will complain to the world, and if my complaints are well-addressed quickly, that's amazing, and I'll blog about that too.

But if my complaints aren't addressed, I'm likely to team up with other people with the same complaint, and people who haven't complained will read about how your company sucks.

Check out this post by Chris Brogan on Bank of America. There are now 123 comments and 6 trackbacks...mostly of people talking about how:

-they hate Bank of America
-they love another bank that they left BofA for
-they hate banks

Now if a Chris Brogan were to tell me to say that a bank commented about what they were going to do to address these complaints, I think I'd join that bank.

Still don't get it? Amber Naslund just wrote a post here about "Sharing the Social Media Love" with a lot of good resources.