Reading Reflections #1

Groundswell means ‘A social trend in which people use technology to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.’ Now, the groundswell is used to describe PR activities related to the internet or social media.

In chapter 1, the author use digg.com explains that people can now find news through their own power, rather than listening to traditional media. In this case, traditional companies can only change their own strategies. Emerging social media comes from thousands of sources and smashes traditional businesses like floods. Like a flood, it can't be blocked anywhere. Among them, websites around the world have begun to introduce rating mechanisms, such as Google Store, Apple APP Store, Amazon, Yelp, etc.

Under those innovations, countless people make comments or ratings on goods or services. I think these comments and ratings are helpful to guide other customers. For example, since I started shopping online, I usually will pay attention to customer comments and ratings. Because I found that the higher the rating, the better the quality of the product. From then on, every time I make a purchase online, I will review dozens of comments to evaluate the quality of the product before making a decision.

In chapter 2, we might think groundswell appears to be a bad activity because it weakens and undermined the control of the company and the organization. But in fact, as long as we can understand groundswell, it will be a good skill. Groundswell requires knowledge, experience, and enlightenment just like any other skill. Also, we should concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies. Because technology is constantly evolving, and no matter what technology will be invented, it always involves people's relationships. In this chapter, people have created a variety of websites to diversify the network. People created blogs, user-generated content, and podcasts to share their creations; people created social networks and virtual worlds to connect with each other; people made wikis and open source to collaborate; people made forums, ratings, And reviews to share their reaction to something; people use tags to classify network information; people use RSS and widgets
to accelerate consumption. The author uses five questions to dissect these new categories when writing the above six distinctions, which are '(1) how they work, (2) how many people use them, (3) how they form part of the groundswell, ( 4) how they threaten institutional power, and (5) what you can do about them.'

In chapter 3, the book uses a new term AFOL in the example, which means adult fans of Lego. The third chapter begins with the analysis of the psychology and behavior of several Lego important adult customers and divides them into several categories for use on a groundswell. They are creators, conversationalists, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives.

Social Technographics Ladder by Kristin Slevin

In Chapter 4, I think the most important thing is the five objects that companies can pursue in the groundswell. In the author and his team's observation of hundreds of companies pursuing groundswell strategies, they identified the following five objectives:
Listening: Use the groundswell for research and to better understand your customers.
Talking: Use the groundswell to spread messages about your company.
Energizing: Find your most enthusiastic customers, and use the groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth.
Supporting: Set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other.
Embracing: Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products.