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.
I also thought that chapter 4 was the most interesting part of the past readings - or if not the most interesting, the clearest way of talking to businesses about how to open up to the change! You mentioned how every company has different things that it finds important, and so will use social media technologies differently; an issue that seems to be central for companies to understand. We saw that Walmart's blog turned into a disaster because it did not understand those differences in media. I think the book does a pretty good job of underlining that and demonstrating the different ways of communicating with customers - definitely a great chapter!
ReplyDeletethe groundswell is fast becoming the marketing tool of the of our generation and i thought that it is important to be able to know how to work with it because in order to foster a strong internet presence. It is a strategy that is truly based on the people constant use of the internet and it will be an interesting phenomenon when the whole world becomes apart of it.
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