Reading 2 Chapter7 Energizing The Groundswell

The book let me know a truth: for political candidates, when they burn their supporters up and spreading the word, it is called "energizing the base".  Companies and customers are in the same situation. It is a powerful way to energizing the base and use the relative groundswell to let your customers spreading the products or services to more people. In chapter 7, the social media strategy leader Josh Bernoff told us how to charge up your best customers and let them use social media technologies to recruit the people around them through positive word of mouth, such as using ratings, reviews and on-line communities.

The word of mouth succeeds because it is believable, self-reinforcing and self-spreading. I think no company will say bad thing about their products or services, so when customers see the advertising or the post on Facebook about introduction or recommendation of the products and services, they may not believe all they showed is true. But you can image if someone really used it before, and told you it's wonderful and recommended you to try, I believe you will. That is what we call "the word of mouth". 

I can give an example of myself. I love traveling, which means I should often search the flight and hotel information on the web. The web I often use is "cheaptickets".

 This is the recently trips I did in my account. You can see "write a review" following every trip. When I click one, it shows like like the picture blow:

 so I can write what's my feeling about this hotel, and then can give the suggestion to the following customers. Before I choose the hotel or activities in my trip, I also will read the review about them and then make a decision.

It totally showed that the value of word of mouth means much, so many companies would like to recruit volunteer by giving them samples or coupons for new products, and let them write the reviews. The positive reviews will help them spreading their products, and the negative reviews also can help the company do some good change to improve their product. In life, people would like to share the good things to family and friends, so it is worth to energize them. Many companies even create a community for their customers, so people can talk about the product or service together and solve each others' problem.

Facebook

Over the past couple of years, social networking sites such as My space and Facebook have been gaining popularity. They are free, easy to join, and easy to message its members. Teenagers chat about everything from school, to sports, to what they were doing last night. In another word, we can't live without Facebook, in this ear, it is impossible for us to live without internet, Facebook brings together several online tools and acts like a black hole that sucks in varies functions. People find most functions here which they cannot live without, like sending message to friends, playing interested games, chatting with friends online, you even can know whether your friends are single or not. Facebook is an open-to-all platform which brings members of the world or a community together and provides a means to share information through a single network. For example, Facebook groups and events allow members from different communities to come together for a common cause or interest. They can show their stance on a particular issue, too. Using Facebook, you can really feel the world becoming smaller and our connection becoming stronger.

Besides entertainment function, Facebook is also an important tool in business area, recently, many companies would check their employees' Facebook before they hire them, the human resource department manager can know what this person thinking about, what is his attitude toward life and work, is it positive or negative, is he dependable, what are his friends think about him, after seriously consideration, the manager can finally make the decision to hire this person, without Facebook, they will lose an important way to judge a person good or bad.

Facebook is also a good way to do business, major companies all have Facebook, they can post their new products, new deals, advertisements on Facebook, since billion of people have Facebook, companies can make free advertisements and let more people know about their products, in a word, Facebook allows you to present your business in a way you might not be able to on your business website. And many of your potential buyers will appreciate this more approachable version of your business.

Admittedly, Facebook is not all good for humankind, it also have negative impact, like teenagers may find unhealthy website on Facebook, many merchants post fack advertisement on Facebook to confuse customers, it is a fictitious community, even the people on Facebook are all real, but you spend more time on Facebook, you have less time for your real friends and parents. But every thing have pros and cons, if we use it in a right way, Facebook can be a good tool to make this world a better place.

Reading charpter4

I just finished reading the first six chapters of the <groundswell> and I have to say that it is really a long trip. Although I have been studying the communication major for half year, I still can get a lot of new things from this book. There is much content in the six chapters, so I just want to talk about chapter 4 which is "strategies for tapping the groundswell".

After I read the story in the first part of this chapter, I think that this situation is really common in many companies. Technology is shifting so quickly, so as the new media technology. It is impossible for people to chase every change in the new media technology and use it. Besides, even we see our competitors use the new media technology, we still need time to think about whether we should change the old one which still runs good to the new technology that we should cost time testing. I get a very interesting name for this situation I just mentioned from this chapter which is "groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome". To solve this, firstly, manager should think about the need of customers and the objectives of the company, and then the author make a summary about the four step planning progress which is people, objective, strategy, and technology.

People means customers, and obviously they are the market of the company. What they are think should be the direction of the development of a company, especially the company plans to make a change. Objective is the goals of a company, and maybe the goal will be different due to the different companies. For example, some companies think the market is most important thing to them, but some companies think the income is the most important, so media technology also will be different for various purpose. Before every big step, we need plan and strategy. We will list all the problems we may meet in the progress and figure out the solution. After you complete the three steps above, you can choose the appropriate media technologies, such as Blogs, Wikis, social networks, to help you in your whole plan.

Run a company need strategy and make a good change still need strategy. Even it is just a media change, it is still related with the marketing, the sales and the development of a company. A good change will help a company win more support and success.