One of the benefits of the social media age is that reaching out to your audience is easier than ever before. This is beneficial for several reasons: One, you never have to suffer from “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome. Cultivate a strong following through an outlet like Twitter, for example, and you’ll always be fresh in your followers’ minds.

You can also use social media as an invaluable image tool. If your online research indicates that there’s an unfortunate perception of your company, you can use social media as a way to chip away at that perception.

For example, I’m a Kansas City Chiefs fan. Over the last few years, fans like me haven’t had much to cheer about. Before the 2007 season, the front office failed to anticipate the decline of key players on the roster, and the team nosedived to a dismal 4-12 record. It got even worse during the 2008 season when the team’s plan to build for the future by letting younger players learn on the job resulted in an even worse 2-14 record.

Thanks to those spectacular failures, a very vocal segment of Chiefs fans and writers lashed out, deriding everyone from the coaching staff to the front office as morons or worse. In some cases, they went so far as to claim that the front office responsible for acquiring players and building the team was making personnel decisions based on ensuring the organization’s profitability, and not out of a desire to give fans the kind of winning team they could be proud to root for.

I’ve been a diehard Chiefs fan since the 1980s, and this was the most negativity I’d seen toward the team and, more specifically, the people running it.

To the Chiefs’ credit, they’ve made moves to rectify both the on-field and off-the-field issues. To reboot the football operation, Chiefs Chairman of the Board Clark Hunt disposed of a number of front office employees and coaching staff members and aggressively assembled a new staff of the best and brightest.

If the comments I’ve seen on various Chiefs-related forums are any indication, those moves helped engender a little faith in the football side of the organization. They’ve also used the power of social media to combat some of the negative stereotypes that have plagued the organization in recent years.

They’ve introduced a new blog on their Web site, manned by an up-and-coming writer hired to bring new energy and a new perspective. They’ve employed Twitter to give fans a steady stream of updates into the Chiefs’ day-to-day operations. They’ve introduced Chiefs 365, an online message board where fans can stay connected to each other and the team, and a number of other fan-driven features to the site. And look no farther than this gem for proof that they’ve truly embraced the power social media has in dispelling the image of an organization gone stale:

Now THAT is great. It’s funny, it’s current, and it is strikingly different than anything I’ve seen out of the Chiefs in 20 years. And while the truth is that it will still take wins on the football field to truly reignite the fan base, for an organization intent on recreating itself in the eyes of its fans, they’ve already punched in a touchdown or two.