Imagine a sea of information.
Imagine your Facebook pages, your Twitter updates, your blogs, your comments and reviews being small drops of water in that sea. What would you think if you are told that you have a good chance of making a very big wave, a groundswell in the sea?
That’s what Li and Bernoff try to tell today’s corporations, governments, and all other kinds of organizations in their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. A negative ZAGAT review could influence or change someone’s decision making on where to dine; a Tweet calling on supporting disaster relief in Haiti could be retweeted many times to spread the word and motivate action among thousands of people; a big thumb-up to M.A.C. Brush 187 in some Japanese girl’s makeup vlog (boys, feel free to replace it with, say, Ford Mustang in car blogs) may make you curious enough to get to a local Sephora in Raleigh and try it out. Today’s consumers are no longer their own islands. Between them and the information in traditional forms of pitches from salespersons, commercials, advertorials, news releases and so on, there are fellow consumers that inform, educate, share experience with, and bring changes to one another, making big waves together. Social media is definitely changing the social/economic/political dynamics locally and globally. Thus, traditional institutions like corporations must learn how to become wave makers, or at least decent surfers.
As a marketing communication analyst in a PR agency, my constant interest lies in helping businesses understand, communicate, and manage relationships with consumers. Since most target audience today is in the groundswell made possible by social media, it is thus natural to feature in my blog three key players- consumers, social media, and public relations. I’d keep exploring how businesses can effectively establish and maintain relationship with consumers using social media. I’d look for insights into how leaders of organizations can jump out of comfort zones, and genuinely embrace the groundswell.
Welcome aboard, and let's start the exploration!
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