Welcome to the Participation Age: Is Your Digital Brand Ready?

You are the media. Yes you. You, your friends, your mom, your dad, your kids, your pastor, your teacher, your hair stylist, your car mechanic, and even your cat has the opportunity to be the media. We all know cats steal way too much time from the inter webs.

Each of us has the opportunity to be the media. We can launch a blog, start a business, embrace video live streaming, get on snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and everything in between and within a short time steal media attention from even some of the biggest, baddest media platforms that have been doing this for decades.

Media at a human level gives us all an even playing field. It enables the little guys and gals and even furry friends to compete with the big media.

Here is the catch though. You are only the media if you participate. Times are changing and you can't simply throw sloppy media to the masses and expect to build your business or brand.

Welcome to the participation age my friends. The age where you must embrace conversation, human connection and meaning in dialog, not just one to many show up and throw up content. The traditional media is changing regardless if you want to accept it or not.

I am the co-founder and CEO of a successful social media, digital marketing and conversion optimization agency, Marketing Nutz. We help brands of all sizes embrace the media of today to build community, build their brand, build their business and most importantly build the people who want to engage and join them in this world of inspiration and participation. It's not about building you. It's about building something bigger, better and amazing together that we could never do by ourselves as one.

The one thing we have found consistent in working with entrepreneurs to Fortune 10 brands is that the brands who have the mindset of participation, inspiration and human connection are the brands that see an ROI from the new media of today. Unfortunately the brands who embrace media today as a way to blast their noise, beg for tweets and downloads never see the light of day when it comes to success in the digital world of the ever and always connected consumer.

I spend 15+ years humanizing brands and building participating communities in corporate America before starting my own company 5 years ago. Participation, inspiration, human relationships were not invented by Facebook, Twitter or social media of any kind.

Smart marketers have understood these behaviors are at the core of business and relationships for decades. The sad truth is that it took social media to wake many people up to this fact.

Social media now showcases not only the brands that do it right, but also the brands that are lazy. You can't get away with lazy and sloppy marketing like you use to be able to. Now marketers who fall to lazy tactics find themselves at the showcase of podcast episodes, live video streaming, Twitter conversation and even front and center screen on traditional tv and media. You can run but you can't hide.

Did you know that 90% of smart phone owners have their mobile device in arms reach 100% of the time? Why does this matter? Because they are available 100% of the time to listen, learn, engage and participate. It's up to you what you do with that person on the other end of the smart phone, iPhone, Android device.

Are you ready for the participation age? Are you ready to inspire, connect and help your audience achieve their goals? It's going to require participation from you, period. You can no longer throw masses of dollars at a traditional agency and expect to get the same return you did 10 years ago.

Take a listen to the 177th episode of the Social Zoom Factor Podcast to learn more about the participation age. I share with you 10 ways you can embrace the participation age and ensure your brand is smack dab in the middle of the fun, action, reaction, conversation, engagement and success of this new participation and inspiration era.

Be sure to subscribe to this entire brand new series, “Welcome to The Inspiration Age. Are You Ready?” on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud!