While many organizations keep their heads safely in the sand, evidence mounts that social media is being woven more and more intricately into the fabric of day-to-day business, from customer service to marketing to institutional communication. A few examples have been reported in recent days that, collectively, leave little doubt that social media has become a de facto dimension of doing business.

To start with, low-cost airlines are gaining competitive advantage of their larger, lumbering brethren by using social media to engage with, rather than market to, their customer base.  An AP story offers side-by-side examples of the difference in approaches between JetBlue (the low-cost airline) and Delta (the larger, lumbering carrier). In the JetBlue example, a passenger tweeted that the airline had forgotten to put her wheelchair on her flight (and, to make matters worse, it was her birthday). In a short seven minutes, she received a tweet back from JetBlue letting her know the crew was already working to rectify the mistake.

Delta, on the other hand, has a Facebook fan page on which a traveler suggested that the airline’s on-board WiFi service be factored into the regular ticket price. There was no response at all. The article points out that the fan page is primarily a promotional vehicle; the airline is not much interested in listening to what its passengers have to say on the page.

JetBlue clearly has the advantage, given that a study by Forrester (cited in the AP story) found that 68% of leisure travelers who use the Net are inclined to recommend an airline to friends and family, provided the airline took steps to make the passenger feel valued. As a result, JetBlue is likely to get referrals from a passenger whose wheelchair they lost, while Delta is likely to get none based on having done nothing at all.

Engaging customers clearly pays dividends that continued one-way, top-down communication does not.

The second example, though, is even more striking. According to the NextGov website, the U.S. State Department has taken the wraps off a pilot program that will award $5 million in grants to for the development of social networking technologies in the Middle East. The idea behind funding the implementation of these social networks is to increase citizen engagement and citizen participation in pursuit of the spread of democracy in the Middle East.

According to the NextGov article,

State said priority will be given to applications that leverage existing social media platforms to improve the ability of Middle Eastern citizens to engage with one another, exchange information in real time and provide an outlet for them to freely discuss political issues. It also states applicants should take into account “Internet access penetration, connections speeds, costs to users and other functional aspects of new media in the region, including censorship, cultural barriers, nuances of local dialect or language, and infrastructure shortcomings when designing projects.”

While the program has risks—foreign governments could construe the program as the U.S. government sticking its nose where it has no business—international affairs expert Henry Farrell notes that it’s actually a less confrontational approach to building democracies through the long-term support of movements already in place. Rather than inspiring revolution, he notes, “This is a long-term set of goals and aspirations that will attempt to create over years, probably decades, a vibrant civil society that over the longer term can lead to a more genuine transformation and a genuinely viable possibility of democracy.”

Finally, Dow Jones reports that blogs are gradually fulfilling the role traditionally played in corporations by official spokespersons. The article quotes Edelman Digital President Rick Murray, who notes that a blog allows organizations to field questions on sensitive issues without directly refusing to comment. Blogs make sense when companies “know it’s a point where they’d just rather not have a conversation, but here’s our point of view,” according to Murray.

The article points to a Microsoft spokesperson who shrugged off a reporter’s request for comment, instead referring the journalist to two blogs written by Microsoft employees, the content of which provided answers that were already on the record.

To review, then:

• Nimble companies are taking market share from their larger competitors by listening to and engaging with customers
• The U.S. government sees social networking as a means of spreading democracy through the world
• Companies are enhancing their ability to accommodate journalist requests through company blogs

The reasons companies choose to remain inactive in social media are many, led by…

• Our customers aren’t using it
• We can’t, for legal reasons
• There’s no business value
• We don’t have the resources

...and the list goes on. Given the mounting evidence of social media’s impact on business, these are little more than futile rationale for denial. The message should be clear: Get engaged or lose out to competitors who beat you to it.