A Really Good Blog

Embrace is a term I like to use often in my life. I embrace my laughter. I embrace my awkwardness. I embrace people. It simply means that I accept these things for what they are and apply them to my life in the best way possible.

The same goes for embracing the groundswell, as talked about in chapter nine of our text. Listening, talking, and energizing are all important, but they mean nothing if you can’t embrace. Embracing means to take what your listeners say and apply it to your products/ideas. Essentially, the customers have a say in what you produce.

Just because we aren’t rocket scientists doesn’t mean we can’t offer suggestions. We know what we want, and we know what it looks like when we get it. A very wise professor (hehe) once asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told him I wanted to “collaborate” with people (which was just a fancy way to say, ‘I don’t know’). But in all seriousness, collaboration comes very close to embracing people’s feedback.

Embracing the groundswell makes innovation quicker. For the most part, customers won’t take long to tell you what they want. We live in a fast-paced society, and people want quick fixes for momentary satisfaction.

The marketing team for salesforce.com ran into a small problem with what features to add to their website next. Their solution was to create IdeaExchange, a place where you can post your idea, vote, comment, and review other ideas. THIS my friends is a perfect example of embracing a customer’s ideas. Because of this, salesforce made four new releases in contrast to only two the year before.

With all this comes humility. A company must know they are not the “god” of the business world and can certainly have flaws. Just ask the employees at Enron. Our text says that customers are going to tell you what they think anyway, so why not listen to them.

According to Li and Bernoff, crowd sourcing is another component to embracing the groundswell. Crowd sourcing means that you directly ask your customers what they think. This is useful for momentary satisfaction. You put your audience in your shoes.

Upon reading a recent article about Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, I was appalled at the complete LACK of embracing his customers. Most of us have become a little more familiar with the new layout on the website, despite its unpopularity when first released. When asked about customer feedback, Zuckerberg replied, “…disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers.” According to another source, he also said that companies who “listen to their customers” are “stupid.”

This doesn’t sound like a smart business move to me. Facebook is probably the most popular social networking site out there, and its CEO isn’t worried about listening to his audience? Maybe because he’s so familiar with how popular, so he knows people will stay on it no matter what he does. Either way, his brownie points just dropped drastically in my book.

Embracing the groundswell is the icing on the cake. With listening, talking, energizing, etc., we learn how to communicate with our audience. With embracing, we learn how to “be” our audience. So any time you need to figure out what to do, just ask someone who cares! (And then of course….do it.)

I have to admit, I put up a lot of resistance to the groundswell at first. When we started Style & Design, I was very adament about not necessarily needing it, and just getting through the class because I had to. My mentality has changed over time.

The reason I’ve been so resistant is because I felt like the groundswell couldn’t help me in my desired future job. I am hoping to work in ministry some day, and because we “church-goers” tend to be a little more traditional, I figured none of them would be up on the latest technology today.

Boy was I wrong!

For the last three summers, I have been working at a Christian sports camp called Kanakuk. It’s a place where kids come to get better in their sport and get fed spiritually at the same time. The marketing department for Kanakuk Kamps does an excellent job of connecting its community (parents and kids, both). They have set up an online forum for parents and kids to interact with eachother throughout the year,  not just in summer.

Chapter 8 of our text outlines the best way the groundswell can support itself – forums.

It’s almost like Kanakuk can just sit back and watch their community come together, without doing very much. Of course, work goes into it at first. Initially, plans have to be made and you kind of have to play with it to see what works (much how Robert tells us with Photoshop, right?!).

Also, you have to know your audience, attract them, and keep them. Reaching out to active customers will attract even more people. Kanakuk even has a “Tell a Friend” page on their website to do this.

Putting in a reputation system is also suggested from the text. Kanakuk’s forum offers a place to write down suggestions, complaints, and praises for the parents. This way, the ministry can monitor their success.

And lastly, you MUST let them know you’re listening! This is the most important part, in my opinion. Every year an incredible amount of work goes into planning Kamp for the summer. As soon as the end of Kamp comes along (August 12), planning starts immediately for the next year. It takes a while to do this, but its all possible because of the feedback that Kanakuk receives from its audience.

It turns out that the groundswell WAS right. I’m going to have to get on board with modern technology if I want to reach success in my field- even if it is a traditional one.

Energize! No, this isn’t some jazzersize work out video…

Once a company has learned the art of effective talking and listening, they must be able to energize their customers. This takes passion, charisma, and…more talking.

Word of mouth is the oldest form of energizing a company’s target audience. People believe other people, especially when they’re talking about products to buy. No one wants to see their friend buy crappy dish washing liquid. And even if they did, word of mouth is not easily faked. If anyone should know this, it’s every PR and Communications student at Auburn. After all, how many times did Agne drill those theories about non-verbal communications into our head?!

Li and Bernoff outline three ways for a company to energize its customers. The first is to offer customer reviews and ratings. Customer reviews are my best friend on Ebay. I’m so wary of scams these days that I don’t buy anything online without first reading reviews. This way, customers can feel good about a company who is confident enough to let people rate their performance.

Secondly, you can create an online community for consumers. For the last two years, I have worked at Kanakuk Kamps in Missouri. It’s a Christian-based sports camp that has grown from just one camp location to 12! The president, Joe White, has created website after website trying to spread the word about Kanakuk. The websites are full of color, sounds, and pictures of kids having the time of their lives. I was exploring the web just the other day and found two more websites about Kanakuk Ministries that I didn’t even know existed! Kids and parents are given the opportunity to write testimonials and rate the camp, as well as post pictures. Families who live across the country can keep in touch through the internet and these websites.

The third way to energize customers is to join an online community for your product if it already exists, and offer new incentives or reasons for talking about your company.  This is a bit more difficult to do, because you have to get your foot in the door and make an impression amongst other unknown companies.

Energizing consumers is what its all about. If someone is excited and encouraged about the product they’re buying, their criticism is probably going to be kept to a minimum. Make them feel liked, valued, and missed when they’re absent for a while. But most importantly, give them wings to fly!

Dr. Paul Tournier said, “The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of oneself through contact with other people, and its condition is self-commitment in the dialogue.”

The groundswell not only requires extensive listening, as discussed in chapter five, but also talking. And no, Li and Bernoff are not trying to confuse us. We must learn to talk and listen together and respond accordingly.

Talking means dialogue. Which means the allowance of participation from your audience, as well. This is where public relations gets away from marketing, because you’re not just selling a product and walking away. You’re waiting for feedback.

There are four techniques that Bernoff and Li suggest for talking in the Groundswell: viral videos, social networks, blogs and online communities.

Being that I want to work with a Christian ministry some day, these four techniques could come in handy for me.

Already churches are putting sermons on podcasts and videos and sharing them on the web. Video feeds are also a great way to document mission trips or causes around the world. Seeing a little African girl walking in the slums of Uganda with no shoes on evokes way more emotion than seeing a picture of her sitting on the ground.

My church here in Auburn has a Facebook fan page. Weird. However, more college students are exposed to the church because of it. Events can be posted and mass messages can be sent without having to bother to get everyone’s e-mail addresses. MySpace also has similar applications that make it easy to reach your audience.

Blogs are a type of social network that are becoming more and more popular. Voice of the Martyrs, an organization that highlights persecution of Christians across the globe, has a website just for blogs of those serving in foreign countries. Sittting at my desk in my room I can experience a day in the life of a family serving in India.

Finally, there is creating an online community. The most important part of the online community is not directly advertising your product, but slipping small advertisement in. This doesn’t mean being sneaky, but just smart. Li and Bernoff explain how important honesty is when dealing with your audience.

For example, when the Tylenol scandal broke out in 1982, Johnson & Johnson were extremely effective with their public relations and crisis management. They were up front with their consumers and didn’t hold anything back. As a result, their products are still considered reputable. Their sales even went up after the ordeal.

Hopefully with the ministry I can apply these techniques. I love how even though the world around us changes, I can still adapt those changes to fit my purpose.

It’s ironic…I listened to Chapter 5 of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies talk about listening.

I always thought of myself as a good listener. And most of the time I probably am. But sometimes when someone else doesn’t have the same view as me, it’s hard to listen. I realize later that listening is a key part of working on a relationship, job, etc. If we don’t listen, we don’t produce.

Companies have to listen to their customers because they are the ones who decide the company’s brand, according to Ricardo Guimaraes. It makes perfect sense. If Wrigley’s gum customers don’t like getting “double the pleasure” and “double the fun” out of their gum, that branding isn’t going to stick for long.

The chapter outlines a few ways that companies can listen to their customers better. One example is setting up your own private community. This is like a large focus group, which has clear and insightful results, instead of just answering survey questions.

Another way is to begin brand monitoring. This is when you hire another company to read blogs, go on discussion forums and other social media outlets to find out what people are saying.

The text also outlines why listening can be such a good thing. Those reasons are: finding out what your brand stands for; understanding how the buss is shifting; saving research money and increasing research responsiveness; finding the sources of influence in your market; managing PR crises; and generating new product and marketing ideas.

If a company doesn’t know what they are all about, it’s worth nothing. Research, money, and good communication skills are vital to being a success in today’s business world. I’ve just begun to realize exactly how many people this takes. A company doesn’t just have one sides, but many facets that keep it running. For instance, an engineer for Alabama Power Company isn’t exactly the best person to talk to the media or do marketing research.

It all goes back to teamwork, too. Within an organization or company, people have to work closely together. I’m beginning to see how all these now-hated senior-level group projects are going to benefit me some day.

POST…not just what a lamp is sometimes found on.

People, Objectives, Strategies, and Technologies; four extremely necessary tools for the groundswell to operate effectively.

In my experience, the POST process works for almost every area of life, but let’s explore it a little more in depth, with the example of my internship at the Auburn Alumni Center.

The Alumni Association is a non-profit organization that strives to strengthen the relationship between the University and it’s alumni and friends (that’s right, you don’t actually have to be an alum of Auburn to be a member of AAA). The Alumni Association also seeks to promote the university’s traditions and increase its membership. They support university scholarship and recruitment efforts by creating an endless number of campaigns and free gifts.

My job at AAA is the marketing and membership intern. This fits right in with what we’re talking about in The Groundswell: how to target the right audience and communicate with them effectively.

First, our audience (“people”) are recent graduates of Auburn, current members of AAA, and potential members. So the range of ages is pretty wide. Our membership isn’t limited to men or women, either.

A big objective of AAA is to listen to our members. We have to find out what they like, don’t like, and would like to see in the future of the organization. We make sure that we are constantly communicating with our members to do this; they’re located all over the country and world so we have to use the web a lot of the time.

Another objective is to energize our members to keep up the Auburn spirit, or potential members to want to have that spirit. Our marketing department is always busy coming up with new ways to attract members or fun new goodies to give away.

Embracing our audience is another biggie. Auburn University is about famiy, and we try to convey that to our alumni as much as possible. Making them feel like they are still a part of Auburn keeps the family together, and makes them feel special.

As I said earlier, it is very important for our marketing department to strategize. We have to make sure we finish projects by the deadline, because most of our stuff goes off to printers who are expecting us. Wording is very important. A majority of our material is received by mail, so our members have nothing to go on but how we word things.

Technologies are advancing at AAA. Recently, Tiger2Tiger was developed, a social network for alumni to keep in touch with eachother and update others on job opportunities. LinkedIn and Facebook are becoming an important part of advertising, as well as Auburn’s website.

Since I’ve started working with Alumni Affairs, I’ve been very impressed with their efforts at serving friends and alumni of Auburn University. This really is just for those of you out there who still want to be part of Auburn’s family, no strings attached.

Who’d have thunk there could be so many different types of users in the groundswell? We explore the differences between creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. I fear I am becoming all of them, save inactive!

Towards the later years of high school, facebook came out. I loved it. It seemed so cool to join, and I only wanted to be able to keep up with friends. Facebook was so basic back then, without the random and annoying applications that are created every day. I became a “joiner” with Facebook.

Over the years I have increased my participation with facebook, adding bumper stickers, jetman games, and a monstrous number of photos to my profile. I started out justifying my constant interaction with the need to “keep up with friends.” However lately, I can hardly seem to justify the hours I spend on it. Will this happen with my blogging? I hope not.

Recently I have become a joiner, critic, and spectator with our numerous blogs we keep up with. I’ve started to realize the vast amount of this world’s population that is doing so as well! I had no idea how many people were online these days. I had no idea that even half the stuff we’re learning about existed!

However resistant I may once have been to the groundswell and its overwhelming qualities, I find that I will probably be online forever, now. This generation is excellent at doing things online now. We blog instead of have phone conversations. We send emails instead of letters. We look at each other’s facebook profiles to see pictures from last year’s vacation instead of paying that person a friendly visit.

Can we go back to the old days? I hardly think so. We are a society that wants things fast…and the groundswell provides us that. Even the political scene is embracing the groundswell. It’s the fastest way to put campaign platforms and strategies out there. I can’t imagine how hard the “online media director” had to work for the 2008 presidential campaigns.

This last election is a testament to how well the groundswell influences the public. Barack Obama’s campaign was titled “Change”, plastered all over their website and on supporter’s websites. “Change” is a pretty memorable title. It evokes passion in a person.

Let’s look at John McCain’s website and campaign. Does anyone even remember the title of his campaign? I sure didn’t, and even after searching the web for it, I can’t find it. His website has one thing on it. A letter to the American people and President Obama congratulating him. That just goes to show you how effective our technologies can be.

What’s even creepier to me is the fact that my mom has a growing chance of becoming a joiner and spectator herself. She’s not on facebook yet…we haven’t allowed her that, but she does know her away around the web. I fear that my mother may be my most attentive stalker yet.

If I had stopped reading past the point where Li and Bernoff explain jujitsu, I’d probably be a little confused. They define it as “a Japanese martial art that enables you to harness the power of your opponent for your own advantage.” All the while, the text is trying to explain why the groundswell is a good thing. This just makes me think of deception and slyness.

Ok, so maybe “deception” is a strong word. It’s just being smart. After all, technology is rapidly changing every day and we have to know how to use it. Think about laptops…it seems like a new one comes out every year that has twice the bells and whistles the last one did.

When Li and Bernoff talk about relationships being key, and more important than technologies, I am brought back to Robert Agne’s communication class. All we talked about was theory after theory, and how to expect other people’s behaviors. This information packed away in the depths of my brain could prove useful for understanding how the groundswell works and how power shifts.

First, we talk about blogs. And I question myself even as I write this…am I doing it right? But is there a correct way to blog? Yes, of course there is. It takes focus and constant participation. Sitting here and just writing to my heart’s content wouldn’t do. No, I have to read other blogs and their comments and comment on them myself. As the text points out, blogs are great tools for feedback. People are more likely to type their feelings out when they are kept anonymous, or at least their face can’t be seen.

Next, we move to Facebook and other networking sites. My facebook account is of great importance to me. I keep up with old friends, new friends, and even friends overseas with it. However, I keep my profile very private for safety reasons.

One thing I wasn’t aware of were how many wikis are out there. I’m only familiar with Wikipedia, and isn’t the founder of that a former producer of adult films or something? Sounds like I should move on to a new wiki. It doesn’t surprise me that over 22 percent of online American adults use Wikipedia, but only 6 percent contribute to it. I’ve never once contributed.

What I don’t understand are tags. The only thing I know about them are that they help in searches, and I put them under my videos and blogs posted on Loveliest Village and Corner News.

I’ve recently become a member of Twitter. I’ve never used it but I think it’s a great idea. It sounds like some people take advantage of it though. It’s like a facebook status for your phone. Nothing irritates me more than when people update their status every hour, letting me and the rest of the world out there know when they’re cutting their toenails. Gross. So when Twitter users give hourly updates as well, on things like what they had for lunch, it makes me cringe inside. Hopefully that will die down.

I like the questions the text pushes us to ask every time we evaluate new technology: Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways? Is it effortless to sign up for? Does it shift power from institutions to people? Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself? And finally, is it an open platform that invites partnerships? It’s basically like a check list…accountability, if you will.

I have to ask myself though, will I ever use ALL of this stuff? Sometimes it’s intimidating…

So apparently, the “groundswell” is something that is inevitable and will run you over if you don’t get on board. At first, I was a little bit skeptical. I mean, society tells us every day that we’ll be “so much happier” if we have this and that, and that we should act a certain way in order to be successful. With bigger and better things has come the development of the groundswell, a social trend in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than go through companies and corporations. I didn’t like the sound of that. I’m a simple girl.

But it became clear to me that I would never escape it. Even if I get a job with a non-profit company, one that scrimps on costs and does everything it can to stay away from wealth, I will still have to deal with the groundswell. As a business owner/operator, you have to give the people what they want…and what they want is technology.

In chapter one of the text, Bob Lutz and Rick Clancy are just a couple of examples of people embracing the groundswell, despite how daunting it looked. And Lutz shows us that even if we think we can’t do it, or if we’re a bit rusty at communicating with bloggers at first, we can indeed become good at it. After all, “the movement can’t be contained…you should live in it and thrive in it,” according to Li and Bernoff.

Particularly entertaining to read was the account of Kevin Rose, founder of Dig.com. Although it surprised me that when caught between trying to please the law and pleasing his audience, he chose his audience. Here is a very successful man who created his business at a young age and has much to be proud of. He would risk his criminal record to please those that he serves on a day-to-day basis. Was it stupid? Or maybe just downright loyal.

This is a classic example of the Internet users trumping the business world. Bloggers showed that they were in charge. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t happened more often, considering how easy it was for them to triumph.

The Internet is coming out on top in every category: business, retail, trading, etc. There’s a way to do it online for everything, giving people an excuse to just stay home instead of going to meetings or sending emails instead of phone calls. One could argue that it’s making us lazy. However I would argue that its making us smarter, exploring the limits of what it means to communicate with each other. Will there ever be a stopping point?

The text supports evidence that the groundswell has emerged because of three trends: people, technology, and economics. All three of which are changing rapidly and unexpectedly. There’s no way to contain them in the world of yesterday. The only way is to use them to move forward and communicate faster, longer, and in more ways than we could ever have imagined. To use them for the groundswell.