I am blessed to live in a house with a child who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS).  AS is a form of autism in which an individual can’t comprehend the social rules we all learn at an early age.  They can’t engage in the conversational give and take we all take for granted.  Their conversations with others often become monologues, and people quickly tune them out.  And the AS child is left wondering why no one is listening.

It dawned on me that many marketers are suffering from the same type of affliction.  They are holding on to the rules and norms of the past, and trying to reach their target audiences through one-way monologues.

The problem is, people’s expectations have changed.   People don’t want to be spoken to.  They want to be engaged in a dialogue with brands.  They want transparency and to be heard.

And it’s not just kids and Millennials that are engaging with brands.

In fact, according to a recent study of 354 top executives at large U.S. companies (those with sales of greater than $1 billion) by Forbes Insights in association with Google, more than half of executives under 40 say they use Twitter daily or several times a week.  86% of all executives said they occasionally or frequently click on linked words from web articles and content.

In other words, even in the corner offices of some of the country’s greatest companies, engagement and dialogues are occurring every day.

Is your brand engaged in conversations?  Or are people starting to tune you out?