The Essential Need for Social Media in Today’s Business Tool Box

With the speed of business sustainability information rapidly increasing and global eco awareness constantly expanding, it has become increasingly important for companies to harness the power of social media to engage with stakeholders. Our sustainability consulting finds this mindset is now beginning to expand to traditional business and even heavy industry.

In an interesting post, How Social Media is Fueling Automotive R&D, Industry Week discusses the growing trend among companies to actively capture consumer insight and options on new product ideas through the latest interactive technologies. Beyond the traditional business focus to enhanced customer relations, a growing business sector believes these interactions to be essential to long-term sustainability.

“The number one cause of growth stalls is what we call premium position captivity–the inability to adapt the firm’s offerings as market needs change and new competitors enter…Progressive strategists recognize the risk this approach has of prematurely dismissing new competitors with different value propositions. They develop a rich understanding of the different drivers of customer value and seek out early signals that the importance of those drivers is changing.” –CEB Views

Social media has proven to be an effective way to address two of the biggest hurdles of social change: reaching the people who can actually make a difference, and providing the means and channels for them to do so. Leveraging today’s tools, progressive organizations armed with business sustainability strategies are reaching new levels of efficiency in social change.

At Taiga Company, our sustainability consulting encourages clients to build stakeholder engagement programs and leverage social media tools to implement direct and measurable impacts on social, environmental, and economic goals.