I can personally tell you what the power of social networking is amazing. Back before the advent of of social networks and social media an individual  consumer would work days, weeks and perhaps years to spread the word out about something.

Large companies have failed to see that with social networks individuals can literally reach millions with a simple click of a submit button. Now that Social feeds (i.e. lifestreaming) has become popular the message can be spread across the globe in mere minutes or least within days.

I have in the past had to bring attention to the failings of some very large companies, and in the beginning most tried to ignore the issue in the hopes that it would go away. Of course it didn't and through the use of social media my messages were read and responded to far and wide.

With that being said I also learned that there are two kinds of companies. Those that do the right thing and keep their reputation in good order and then there are those that don't care about their reputation and have it slowly erode out from under them.

Back in 2007 I took Dell to task over some billing issues and a defective laptop. It took a while for them to come around and realize that by ignoring the problem it was tarnishing their reputation. I ended having to build a sucks.com (suckstobedell.com - note this domain is not active but is still registered to me). Michael Dell himself became aware of the problem and the problem was fixed to my satisfaction. My apologies to Dell for dredging this up again, it is only for illustration purposes. Did you know that Dell has a consumer advocates (like John Blain) that actually resolves issues for customers that have been given the run around? I will have to say that Dell does have a vested interest in keeping it's reputation bright and shiny.

Then you have some companies that you have to embarrass after they attempt to use empty and baseless legal threats to shut you up. I can't mention one company by name as we have a settlement agreement, but let's just say it is a 42 billion dollar building supply company. They ended up having to hire an attorney (William "B.B" Smith) from Jones Day in Atlanta to settle with me. He is a well known trademark litigation attorney. I still can't figure why they hired him to settle with me, as they could have settled with me directly and saved the attorney fees. Mr. Smith was quite enjoyable to work with. Pity it had to go that far. Anyway my problem got fixed.

Then there are companies like Sprint (see www.sprint-really-sucks.com)  and Northern Leasing Systems (see www.northernleasingsystemssucks.com) that ignore the fact that they did wrong and think the problem will just go away. What they haven't realized yet is that one happy customer will tell maybe 5 or 6 people, but an angry customer will tell everyone they can about how bad they were treated. Very anti-reputation for sure. In my case, I will reach millions and millions before it is all said and done. Oh and I guess I neglected to mention my little conflict with AMD / ATI (suckstobeamd.com and suckstobeati.com - they aren't active any more as the issue was finally addressed, but the domains are still registered to me) I had to call them out about a  Radeon "Certified for Vista" video card that didn't work with Vista. Actually the card didn't even run well on XP

I just recently (in the past two months) had a problem with FedEx. I fired off a simple email to the FedEx board of directors, that very evening I received a call from FedEx corporate and they fixed the problem. I didn't even have to put "it" out on the social networks to get their attention. FedEx wants their reputation squeaky clean and I applaud them for that.

Social Networking and Social Media can reach tens of millions of readers (i.e. potential customers) and these stubborn and/or arrogant companies fail to realize that one person can have a profound effect on their business and reputation.

Today, via social media tools the individual consumer can wield power than even the largest companies on the planet cannot stop. Social media gives the consumer power it never had before in history. Social Networking turns those weeks, months and years into days. My point is that social networking and social media takes the power away from arrogant companies and gives the power back to consumers.

Feel free to comment on this post, I would love to read your feedback!

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