I grew up in a technological “overlapping” area and the game is definitely changing.  Remember the good old days when a computer was a glorified typewriter and the only advantage of having one is the “backspace” button?  Remember when you had to “dial” a number on the telephone and people actually picked up the phone without knowing who was on the other line (it was actually kind of fun trying to guess who was calling)?

I was in high school when the internet was born and I didn’t know what to really make of it.  Computers were getting faster and faster with more storage and more applications.  I knew this was the future…Star Trek said so.  Then in college the big thing was ICQ instant messaging and chat rooms.  Google wasn’t even a word back then and having an Apple computer was laughed at.  Email was a chore and having a website was a golden opportunity (remember “Geocities?”).

Now we fast-forward to 2010…sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, Myspace, Youtube, Vimeo, and hundreds more have changed the way we communicate with one another.  I can get information from halfway around the world faster than I can dial on the phone to that person.  I can interact with people who live distances away and form a “friendship.”  I’ve been able to foster friendships with people I’ve met at seminars after we leave all through sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Businesses are taking advantage of this platform and the “great” businesses are being distinguished from the “good” ones.  Here’s a good example: a few years back I had an issue with my Dell laptop.  I tweeted out “my Dell crashed, I hate PCs.”  Within 15 minutes a rep from Dell contacted me and had a new hard drive shipped out to me within the hour.  I got the new hard drive and was back in business within 2 days.  It would’ve probably taken me 2 days just to get to customer service in Bangladesh! (I have since gave up my PC and am strictly Apple now…sorry Dell you’re products just don’t compete, but your customer service was prompt).

Using social media in building my practice has broken down lots of barriers and stigmas that patients have of doctors.  I keep my doors open for my patients to contact me through any social media channel.  I don’t feel that just because I have the credentials of a doctor that I should put myself above my patients.  Rather I am there to serve them inside and outside of the office.  It’s what I would want from my doc if I had a question after I left the office.  Plus it allows patients to see that I’m just another human being.

So what does this mean???  Well this so called ‘recession’ will weed out the businesses who fail to keep up with the times.  My generation has seen the birth of the internet.  To us, the internet was free and we expect things to be free, but we’ll also pay for things if we like them.  Look at music for example…sites like Napster made downloading music for free highly accessible, but the music industry thought that was end of music.  So what happened…the quality of music declined as record labels wanted to put least amount of effort into the production of a CD.

Work on one good song to be a hit and then fill the 11 other tracks with crap.

But then came iTunes and proved that people will pay for music.

So my advice for any business owner out there:

• Be in the game and change with the times
• Build your brand, whatever that may be to you
• Give free stuff, people will eventually pay for your products/services once they see the value of your stuff
• Interact with your customers because they write your paychecks