Ensure your employees understand what your brand stands for so they can be your first line of word-of-mouth advertising.

In today's social business marketplace Facebook is one of the best places for nonprofits to be discovered and connect with a larger audience on the basis of shared values. So to get started, a non-profit should launch a Facebook page and invite your existing real world community to connect your cause and their networks.

The new dynamics between brands and consumers, driven by social media, are proving to be a powerful impetus for change.

It is time for corporate America to become 'the third pillar' of social change in our society, complementing the first two pillars of government and philanthropy. We need the entire private sector to begin committing itself not just to making profits, but to fulfilling higher and larger purposes by contributing to building a better world.

The leverage and influence social media gives citizens are rapidly spreading into the business world.

Concerned consumers are realizing that they can use social media to organize themselves around shared values to start effective movements. Social media gives them a sounding board to share ideas, as well as a means to punish irresponsible corporate behaviors.

What is sure is that technological change is accelerating in all directions and, like children playing in a fountain, consumers are reveling in the experience.