Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies | 
 enlarge | Authors: Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 603
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1422125009
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4833
EAN: 9781422125007
Publication Date: April 21, 2008
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Product Description
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 31 more reviews...
 A Groundswell of Love for this Book April 4, 2008
David Berkowitz (New York, NY USA)
31 out of 34 found this review helpful
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.
How groundswell thinking can help to achieve success in a "flat world" May 3, 2008
Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
What Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff characterize as "the groundswell" is "a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you're in a company, this is a challenge...[This trend] has created s permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, [begin italics] regardless of how the individual technology pieces change [end italics]."More specifically, Li and Bernoff respond to questions such as these:
What unique threats does the groundswell pose?
How to turn it to competitive advantage, "like a jujitsu master"?
What are its component technologies?
What is The Social Technologies Profile and what does it offer?
What is the four-step POST process for creating strategies?
What are the five primary objectives for a groundswell strategy?
How to create customers who are evangelists for you?
How to establish and support relationships between and among your customers?
How can the same trends that empower customers also empower employees?
Throughout their narrative, drawing upon a wealth of data accumulated by Forrester Research as well as their own studies, Li and Bernoff include a number of real-world examples - in the form of mini-case studies -- that demonstrate key points. They offer lessons to be learned from Mini USA, the American arm of BMW's Mini Cooper brand (how to listen through brand monitoring, Pages 89-93), Ernst & Young (how to communicate in social networks, Pages 104-106), Hewlett-Packard (how to communicate with customers through blogging, Pages 108-112), eBags (how to energize with customer ratings and reviews, Pages134-140), Constant Contact (how to energize by creating a community, Pages 140-145), the Lego Group (how to energize an existing community, Pages 145-147), and BearingPoint (how to use a wiki to reassure clients, Pages 165-168). Granted, not all of these lessons are directly relevant to a reader's own organization. However, they help to create a context for each key point as well as a frame of reference for what Li and Bernoff describe as a "permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works."
They conclude this brilliant book by offering some advice, not on what to do but on how to be: ever-mindful that the groundswell is about person-to-person activity, a good listener, patient, opportunistic, flexible, collaborative, and humble. Guided and informed by the information and counsel provided by Li and Bernoff, readers will be able to formulate and then execute strategies to achieve a competitive advantage. "You'll be able to build on your successes, both with customers and within your own company. And then, as the groundswell rises and becomes ubiquitous, you will be ready."
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Rob Cross and Andrew Parker's The Hidden Power of Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations. Also Gary Hamel's The Future of Management (with Bill Breen) and Ram Charan's Leaders At All Levels as well as Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson, Richard Ogle's Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas, and Global Brain co-authored by Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney.
The Book Steve Ballmer Needs to Read May 17, 2008
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
6 out of 24 found this review helpful
Edit to state that URL for why Ballmer needs to read this book is in Comment section.
This book was given to me as a gift, along with Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives, and the fact that the guy giving me the books is one of two smartest people I know caused me to jump these two books to the top of my week-end stack.
I normally do not buy books coming out of Gartner or Forrester or other similar shops that produce cookie cutter products. I am very glad I was given this book. I was deeply impressed from page one and continually gratified and astonished as the level of detail as the book progressed.
This is a graduate course in New Age Marketing, and the only thing this book does not have is the need to address "true costs" and honor the triple-bottom line (profit, economic and social justice, and zero environmental footprint: memes are cradle to cradle, sustainable design, green to gold).
The book's bottom line: it's about LISTENING to PEOPLE, not about the technologies. The Presidential candidate that dismisses all their advisors and creates a national blog to address the ten high-level threats to mankind, the twelve policies that must be harmonized, and how nothing we do matters unless we give Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo a model for avoiding our mistakes while achieving our quality of life, should win. Then they can come to Chicago on Lincoln's birthday and participate in the Citizens' SUmmit being organized by Joseph McCormick, a co-founder and guiding light for Reuniting America (110 million strong and growing).
I am very impressed by the examples, and the fact that they are not presented in a cutesy box fashion but woven into the text.
The authors provide numbers that show how an investment in executive blogging and nurturing customers and partners can give back at least 150% if not more (I think it is closer to 5 to 1 RoI), and on the basis of the totality of the book, I take their word for it. I take this to the next level and would point out that the US Government investment of our dollars in "Strategic Communication" will continue to be a failure because no amount of "PR" is going to overcome the reality of our overbearing presence everywhere.
Very interesting to me was the authors' information, including tables, that shows that Republicans and Independents are not as active in the Web 2.0 environment, and this should be cause for concern among those who wish to challenge the shiftless Democrats and their smoke and mirror enthusiasm for Senator Obama, who is NOT transparent at all (see my review of Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.
Because of this book I have decided to shift all of my online activity to Citizens-Party.org, leaving Earth Intelligence Network as an archive. My intent is to inspire individual public intelligence minutemen (and women) who can disclose the true costs of all products and services, and help us roll back the lunatic $1.3 trillion we spend on war (in the same year, we spent $30 billion on diplomacy, and three different authorities: Medard Gabel, E. O. Wilson, and Lester Brown, have all concluded that we can achieve infinite peace and prosperity for all seven billion at a cost of no more than $250 billion a year).
Other books I recommend:
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
See also the images above under the book cover. Peace--and prosperity--in our time.
Data Driven Yet Reader Friendly - A Much Needed Primer On Online Social Marketing April 21, 2008
Dave Lakhani (Boise, ID United States)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
The authors define a Groundswell as "a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions".
This book demonstrates through quantifiable research that the market is indeed changing (as if we didn't know that) and they show you exactly how you can leverage those changes in your favor.
Using very easy to understand and enjoyable to read language the authors walk you through multiple case studies that not only identify key concepts, but demonstrate exactly how you can use them in your business.
I think one of the most intersting things about this book is that it doesn't focus on the fringe, it focuses on the meaty middle. What I mean by that is that they don't try and demonstrate how much they know about things you've never heard about, they focus on showing you how to use the tools that work today.
I think that this book is a must read for any marketer who is scratching their head and wondering where their ad dollars should go or wondering how to get a handle on online social media.
I had multiple ah-ha moments while reading this book.
Dave Lakhani
Subliminal Persuasion: Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don't Want You To Know
Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want
Several books rolled into one May 31, 2008
Brad Shorr (Geneva, IL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you want to get a handle on new marketing technology and techniques, you couldn't do better than to start here. "Groundswell" covers a lot of ground!
1. A clear, concise overview of what the groundswell phenomenon is all about, how and why companies must understand and leverage it, and all the particular elements of the groundswell universe. If you're confused about the differences between a wiki, a forum, a chat room, and a blog, this book will clear it up for you.
2. Useful statistics (supplied by Forrester) on who's using the Web, where, and for what. How many Americans are reading blogs? How many Germans participate in online forums? Find out here.
3. A wide array of case studies that demonstrate how B2B and B2C firms are using (and misusing) groundswell strategy and tactics. Here you learn how to identify your groundswell market and what you need to do to engage it.
4. A fascinating and instructive look into the groundswell future.
This book should help "new marketing" novices and experts alike. The conversational and simple writing style makes every one of their ideas accessible, and their high level perspective is broad enough in scope that even experts should learn something new.
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