Groundswell Reaction

If you’re like me, you are most likely curious and wondering …. what is groundswell? It is defined as: “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

Basically this translate to: Technology + People = Groundswell

The authors say “these three trends – people’s desire to connect, new interactive technologies, and online economics – have created a new era. This is the fast-growing phenomenon we call the groundswell.” Overall, this book discusses new social media technologies and how relationships with customers, as well as their involvement, will strengthen a business.

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I chose to dive in and break down chapter 10 of Groundswell. Chapter 10, Tapping the Groundswell with Twitter, details how to turn Twitter into a powerful force for connecting with the groundswell for any of the five objectives known as listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing. I decided to focus on this chapter because of how we actively use Twitter as a tool in our class.

Twitter is described as being versatile, as well as a free and open outlet used to connect people.

From chapter 10, I want to focus on the objectives we learned throughout the book and how to apply them to a tool like Twitter. Let’s break down and discuss the 5 groundswell objectives of Twitter and how to use them:

Listening

“When it comes to Twitter, listening is essential. Unless you listen to Twitter, you won’t know what you’re getting into.”

Listening is essential. It’s important to listen and notice what is being discussed and mentioned on Twitter regarding your company or brand. It’s essential to monitor tweets and gain an understanding of responses and reactions that happen on Twitter. Listening will allow a company or brand to gain insight and help better their strategies.

Talking

“Don’t bother setting up a Twitter account and tweeting links to your press releases – you won’t get a whole lot of followers. Instead, think about what you can offer that might get picked up and repeated by others.”

Talking on Twitter must be done well and in an effective manner. This is a way for brands and companies to be responsive, create a reputation for themselves and show what they can offer. Having conversations with customers and staying engaged on the platform of Twitter will help implement these characteristics. To be successful, you must remain interactive and respond, as well as stay present online.

Energizing

“Remember that energizing means finding people who like your products or services and amplifying their voices.”

The key to energizing, on Twitter, is to listen first. This allows you to find certain individuals that your brand or company wants to energize. Energizing simply means to respond to fans or people who enjoy your brand, as well as retweet their content and give them content to retweet. This step is a way to stay in touch with people and build relationships that support your company.

Supporting

“If you create a Twitter account for your company, people will expect you to respond when they tweet their questions and problems to you.”

It is imperative that a company supports itself on Twitter. This means being aware of what is said about your company on Twitter and staying in communication with these individuals so that you can respond back and fix or help their issue. A company can’t ignore the things that are mentioned about them online, they must respond and be alert to the rising issues and discussions.

Embracing

“Embracing the groundswell is the most challenging of groundswell objectives. It’s even harder to do through Twitter, since you must gather a following and then communicate with them 140 characters at a time.”

Embracing means to collaborate with your customers on products and marketing strategies. The book mentions how surveys and providing incentives are good ways to embrace, but the best way to do this is to engage in dialogue. It’s beneficial for companies to ask the opinions and thoughts of their loyal customers. It’s worth it to just ask and then see what feedback is provided.

Twitter will allow your company to be instantly accessible.

To read for yourself, purchase groundswell here. If you’re looking for more information, try following the authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, on none other than the tool I just discussed, Twitter.

Ultimately, I didn’t love Groundswell. Though it did provide very informative information, it was not very direct. It was sometimes difficult to comprehend certain concepts that they were trying to convey because groundswell, in itself, can be confusing until you fully grasp and understand the concept. The authors created this concept themselves, and some of the language used was hard to fathom. I probably wouldn’t recommend using this book again. While I feel that the book provided significant information and insight, I feel that there are more updated and valuable works out there.