When I say the words, “We the people . . ., in order to form a more perfect union . . .,” I tend to do so in the sing-songy way that Schoolhouse Rock did, without much thought to the power of “We.” However, this week I’m reviewing two books that focus specifically on the power of “We,” and it’s interesting to see that a 200-year-old concept–”We” is better than “Me”–still rings true.
While both books deal with social media, it was nice to read the two books back to back. First, I’m reviewing Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. While it had some great insights and tools (more on that below), I was sometimes put off because it’s focused on the Forrester Research audience–Fortune 500 companies. Sure, I could glean some great analytical tidbits, but I’m really not about to invest $80,000 or even $200,000 to deal with social media on behalf of my company.
Fortunately, I also received a copy of We are Smarter than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business by Barry Libert and Jon Spector (and thousands of contributors). While it covered similar ground, the examples and ideas were sometimes more applicable (and adaptable) to small businesses. More on that later this week.
Groundswell:
Like Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirkey, Groundswell starts out with a series of powerful example of how people are influencing the media by using tools such as Digg.com, Google Earth and YouTube. My favorite bit is when Li and Bernoff describe Barbra Streisand’s attempts to remove a photo of her house from the internet as a bit like trying to get “pee out of a pool.” Thanks to Groundswell, I’ll be thinking of Barbra when I brave the town pool this weekend.
Other interesting points:
Focus on what you want to accomplish first, and then determine the technology. The authors provide a post test:
- People: What are your customers ready for?
- Objectives: What are your goals?
- Strategy: How do you want relationships with your customers to change?
- Technology: What applications should you build?
I wish I had had this test back in 2005, when we built an online member profile database for the Downtown Women’s Club where members could update their profiles themselves, make them searchable on Google, add links to their websites and recommend other members. Well, we built it, and only a few came. I wasn’t sure whether the rest were lost in some cornfields looking for a ballpark, so I quickly backtracked and ran a survey of our members (working women, mostly Gen X and boomers).
What did I find? That they had minimal or little interest in being found on the internet, let alone participating in it. Doh! I ended up writing The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking to educate them as to why they should care. Two years later, we’re finally seeing more of this group using our online networking and marketing platforms.
What I should have done is what Groundswell suggests: Do the survey first to figure out how much of my audience is even interested in being online. Groundswell breaks down your potential audiences into six categories, and you can use the Groundswell Profile Tool to find out how yours stacks up.
- Creators: Bloggers, online consumers, podcasters, video uploaders.
- Critics: People who react to online content, posting comments and rating or reviewing products.
- Collectors: Digg’ers, i.e., people who use social bookmarks such as del.icio.us to “collect” websites.
- Joiners: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter users
- Spectators: people who read/watch what others post, but don’t comment.
- Inactives: Nonparticipants online.
According to the tool, I’m still dealing with a customer base that is not as interested as other groups in “joining” and doing creative things on the internet. (Women in the 35-and-above ranges fall below the average in all categories except “inactives.”) This duplicates what I found in our 2006 survey.
Nevertheless, doing things backward may not have been the worst thing in my case. If I had done the survey first, would I have gone ahead and built an online networking/marketing platform? Probably not. So in that case, ignorance was a bit of a good thing. However, by surveying my group after the fact, it did help me make a decision to “dumb down” our offerings and take out a lot of the bells and whistles.
While I may have failed the post test, I actually did OK with another one of Groundswell’s tests, which is recommended for evaluating a new technology.
- Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways?
- Is it effortless to sign up for?
- Does it shift power from institutions to people?
- Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself?
- Is it an open platform that invites partnerships?
Other good quotes/concepts:
“You cannot ignore this trend. You cannot sit this one out. Unless you are retiring in the next six months, it’s too late to quit and let somebody else handle it. The groundswell trend is unstoppable, and your customers are there.” Hey ladies . . . are you listening to this?
“Your brand is what your customers say it is.”
“Whatever department takes charge of listening to the groundswell–whether it’s research or marketing–will soon become far more central to how decisions are made.”
The book is full of examples of how large companies are getting input from clients through blogs that they wouldn’t get through a survey. And how viral marketing online can be a fraction of the cost of traditional media, yet still have the same impact.
With regard to pursuing a social media strategy, here’s another good guideline from the book:
- Start small.
- Educate your executives. You still need to explain to people that it’s not just kids writing about their day-to-day lives.
- Get the right people to run your strategy. I liked this because the person you want blogging is the one with the passion, not necessarily the title.
- Get your agency and technology partners in sync. If they don’t get the groundswell, it may be time to change.
- Plan for next steps and long term.
The Top Shelf Bottom Line: Here’s a test. Ask your colleagues, business partners, advisory board, web team, ad agency and employees whether they’ve blogged, commented on blogs, posted pictures on Flickr, joined an online network or even written a review on Amazon. If they haven’t done any of that, buy them this book. For those of us who are already in this social media world, some of the tools can help you map out a strategy, so still worth reading, especially if you’re in the midst of writing the marketing portion of your business plan.
Next: We are Smarter than Me.
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.6 Responses to “We are the Groundswell”
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June 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I have to say I agree with a crowd being more powerful than an individual. I have combined social networking with a software tool called glyphius in order to get some assistance with getting a crowd to work for me.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Great tip on Groundswell. I’m seeing more and more people survey, using SurveyMonkey. I’ve been wanting to check them out. I also want to check out Glyphius software which helps you write great ad copy. It scores your ad against a hundred thousand other ads that have been proven or notproven so as to judge whether your ad is great or stinks.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I for one and glad you didn’t do the survey in advance, maybe you would have gone in a different direction. After all, you were able to ‘tweak’ your offerings to make them more in line with the perceived need. This is my first time reading your post and it is in line with the work that I do. I enjoyed it, and am wishing you all the success you deserve!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[…] week I reviewed Groundswell and highlighted some of its analytical tools for social media. However, much of it was geared to […]
July 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
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