Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies [Hardcover]

Charlene Li (Author), Josh Bernoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 2008

Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now.

When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.

Using tools and data straight from Forrester, you ll learn how to:



-Evaluate new social technologies as they emerge

-Determine how different groups of consumers are participating in social technology arenas

-Apply a four-step process for formulating your future strategy

-Build social technologies into your business including monitoring your brand value, talking with the groundswell through marketing and PR campaigns, and energizing your best customers to recruit their peers

Timely and insightful, this book is required reading for executives seeking to protect and strengthen their company s public image.

"Groundswell is jammed with big ideas, useful stories, and quotable stats. This is the new industrial revolution. Are you on board?"

-Seth Godin, author, Meatball Sundae

"This book will rock your world, if social technology hasn't rocked it already. It's a tsunami of unstoppable force. Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Facebook, Google, and Dell are profiting from the crest of the wave. Are you? Li and Bernoff are the apostles of the tsunami. This book will be your bible."

-Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit

Groundswell provides practical advice on how to stay nimble and flexible in an ever-morphing digital world. Enabling your company to respond to change quickly especially when talking to and supporting your consumers is essential for business success.

-Cathie Black, President, Hearst Magazines

"The first phase of the Internet was about getting everyone connected. In this next phase, which changes the way we work, live, play, and learn, we re starting to realize the value of those connections as well as the new communications and experiences those interactions lead to the human network. Groundswell effectively documents this shift and underscores the opportunities available to all from this major market transition."

-John T. Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco

"Heed the Groundswell! It's critical reading and helped us master the new dynamics of social media."

-Christina Norman, President, MTV

"Groundswell is a comprehensive look at the tidal wave of change engulfing marketers. Nobody should attempt to engage the newly empowered and emboldened consumer without first hearing what Li and Bernoff have to say on the subject."

-Clark Kokich, CEO, Avenue A | Razorfish

"Social technologies and the groundswell impact every business and organization worldwide. Li and Bernoff have written an insightful book that takes a refreshing research-driven approach to helping businesses transform themselves and successfully navigate this new dynamic landscape."

-Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President, Edelman Digital, and columnist for Advertising Age

Editorial Reviews

Review

...for Groundswell's intended audience - managers struggling to answer questions such as "should my soap company have a presence on Facebook?" or "why isn't anyone reading our company blog?" - the emphasis on data and analytics is not a bug - it's a feature --The Financial Times, May 21, 2008

Their response, an introduction to the current state of online social networking and what to do about it, is entertaining, well- written and mercifully free from techy details. --The Financial Times, June 4, 2008

The Forrester analysts have prepared one of the most comprehensive and useful primers on the sudden surge in social media. --Advertising Age, July 3, 2008

About the Author

Charlene Li is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. She is one of the driving forces behind Forrester s Social Computing and Web 2.0 research. Josh Bernoff is a vice president at Forrester Research and one of their most senior and most frequently quoted research analysts. He created the Technographics segmentation, a classification of consumers according to how they approach technology.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (April 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422125009
• ISBN-13: 978-1422125007
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (140 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #208,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #86 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Computers & Technology

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 105 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Groundswell of Love for this Book April 4, 2008

By David Berkowitz

Format:Hardcover

Groundswell is the best book on social media I've ever read, and it may be the best book ever written on the subject.

Here's why:

1. It's current. Books on social media by nature almost can't be current. Everything is blogged or twittered one day, forgotten the next. Yet this book has some staying power, and you can give it to your boss or your client feeling reassured that even if they don't get around to reading it for six months, it'll still be valuable when they do.

2. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write the book like authors, not analysts, even though there's plenty of number-crunching with meaty take-aways. The human stories that illustrate each point provide protagonists you can identify with.

3. If you're new to social media, you'll appreciate a lot of the how-to material. If you're a pro, you'll appreciate how to do it even better and some of the more advanced material in the book.

4. The technographics, discussed frequently on the Groundswell blog and in the analysts' presentations, are useful. I've already used these for planning client campaigns to at least check if I'm on the right track or inspire some new thinking. If you read the book, the technographics tool on the Groundswell site becomes even more intuitive, although the site has enough info to get value out of it. It's amazing how much Forrester's giving away.

5. You get breakdowns of return on investment metrics of an executive's corporate blog, ratings and reviews, and a community support forum, figures which are hard to find elsewhere and can provide good benchmarks for related scenarios you may encounter.

6. The book offers thoughtful answers to some of the more important questions. How can you tell if a new technology has staying power? Why do people participate with social media? How do you energize your customers? When should you use blogs, social networks, and other media technologies?

The one thing the book doesn't do enough of is describe why some campaigns go awry. They mention a Special K community on weight management that had a promising start but soon fizzled. Why?

I'm reminded of the chapter heading from Richard Farson's Management of the Absurd: "We learn not from our failures but from our successes - and the failures of others." Farson goes on, "While we may think we are motivated by hearing about the successes of others, believe it or not, little is more encouraging or energizing than learning about or witnessing another's failure, especially if it is an expert who is failing." I wish there were a few more failures to learn from along with the hits.

Outside of that though, this book's an outright success, one I'll be recommending to colleagues, clients, and anyone else who will listen.

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Social Technology Primer May 5, 2008

By Jeffrey Phillips VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

It seems only natural to blog (see my blog at thinkingfaster.typepad.com) about a book like Groundswell, a book recently published by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research. After all, the book is about the growing importance of social networking applications - blogs being a big part of that phenomenon.

Li and Bernoff define the Groundswell as a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, take charge of their own experience and get what they need - from each other instead of from companies. The book looks at the nascent and growing power of informal communication networks using social networking tools - blogs especially, but also social networks and virtual worlds, wikis, online forums, ratings and reviews, tagging and rss feeds. If you've been online lately, you've used one or more of these tools and techniques. What Li and Bernoff are interested in is how these tools and techniques create a completely new dialog between:

* A company and its customers
* The employees within a company
* Customer to customer beyond the scope or control of a company
* Individuals with shared interests

All of this done on the fly, with little centralized control.

The book breaks out into a number of sections. Early in the book, the authors review why the groundswell is taking off and how to participate, and they identify the "tools" - blogs, wikis and so on - that drive the groundswell. Then they introduce the Social Technographic profile, which is meant to provide profiling on how a segment of the population is participating in the groundswell using these tools. Once this platform is built, the authors then look at how to:

* Listen to the groundswell - gain insights from what is written
* Talk to the groundswell - using blogs and communities
* Energize the groundswell - charging up your best online customers
* Embracing the groundswell - including customers as collaborators

Finally, the book looks at a couple of examples of firms that have plunged in head first to gain advantage interacting with these tools and working closely with customers and prospects through the groundswell.

What I like about this book

What's great about this book is that if you and your team know very little about the emerging set of online networking, collaboration and communication tools, the book provides an excellent primer early on, describing what each tool is, how it is used and its benefits. The book is full of excellent examples of firms that have used these tools to advance the interaction between themselves and their customers and prospects.

What I'm skeptical about

The book seems to approach everything from a perspective of "What can the groundswell do for my company?" As a blogger, I tend to think that the "groundswell" - if that's what we are to be called now - expects honest communication and open dialog. The Groundswell to me seems to be more about Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park in London, where anyone with an opinion can bring a soapbox and say what they want to say. If your message is interesting or vital, you'll draw a crowd and grow a network. Many people writing and listening in the "groundswell" are quick to distinguish between "honest" opinion and perspective and "marketing" or PR. I think Groundswell doesn't spend enough time making distinctions between these points. A poorly managed online presence will be quickly sniffed out - especially one where a firm intends to "use" the groundswell for a marketing advantage. It's important to "give" to the groundswell as much as you plan to "get" from it.

This book accurately portrays what any group - a commercial entity, a non-profit, even a government agency - could do leveraging the groundswell. The tools are the easy part - what's hard is opening up to the dialog. Can your organization bear the criticism and questions about its products and services, as well as bask in the positive glow of good feedback?

I was a little disappointed in the wrap up. The authors demonstrate throughout the book deep knowledge of the current state of the groundswell. But as industry analysts and forecasters of future trends, they spend disappointingly little time on the future of the groundswell. Given that almost all of these tools (blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS Feeds) are disaggregated services offered by very small companies or as open source or freeware, what is going to happen? Will we see a consolidation of these tools into some sort of "ERP" for the groundswell? Will I need to turn to del.ici.ous for tagging and Blogger for Blogging and PBWiki for my Wiki, or will these combine? What are larger firms to do that may have concerns about disaggregated, third party solutions run by very small firms that may not be able to demonstrate longevity or the ability to manage critical, sensitive communication links to customers? Given that the two authors make their living as industry analysts, I would have expected a much more detailed look at potential future scenarios.

Conclusion

This book is great if you are just starting out as a "newby" trying to understand how to join the online conversation. Whether you want to tag and aggregate or find interesting feeds or information, or want to actively contribute through ratings, feedback or by blogging, or create an entirely new social network, this book has great advice for you.

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Groundswell is swell - BUT don't buy both books! June 10, 2009

By Amazon Maniac

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have read the original exceptional Groundswell book, and bought this book thinking that it might offer some additional insights on marketing strategies through social media.

Shame on me - I did not read the description very well for this book. It is simply an abridged version of the original book, with three of the chapters reprinted. There is nothing new other than a very brief introduction by one of the authors. I'm at a loss as to why this book was published at all.

I am giving the content of this book 5 stars because it deserves it. However, don't waste your money on this. Buy the full original book instead. You will get much, much more out of it.

You can find the original book here: Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies