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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #718 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
...for Groundswell's intended audience - managers struggling to answer questions such as "should my soap company have a presence on Facebook?" or "why isn't anyone reading our company blog?" - the emphasis on data and analytics is not a bug - it's a feature. --The Financial Times, May 21, 2008

...you can't control users looking to utilize Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networks... CIOs and other business leaders must embrace these technologies in the enterprise, and enable their employees to share and work collectively with each other to foster new innovations. --CIO Magazine, April 16, 2008

Their response, an introduction to the current state of online social networking and what to do about it, is entertaining, well- written and mercifully free from techy details. --The Financial Times, June 4, 2008

About the Author
Charlene Li is a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. She is one of the driving forces behind Forrester s Social Computing and Web 2.0 research. Josh Bernoff is a vice president at Forrester Research and one of their most senior and most frequently quoted research analysts. He created the Technographics segmentation, a classification of consumers according to how they approach technology.

The Forrester analysts have prepared one of the most comprehensive and useful primers on the sudden surge in social media. -Advertising Age, July 3, 2008

Customer Reviews

Groundswell
Groundswell is a very good book if you want to understand modern marketing and customer relationship management. In a world where online accounts for much of everyday life, the way in which companies have to interact with their customers changes. The use of social networks, viral videos, blogs and forums is important. This book really helps to understand, decide what is relevant for a certain situation, and act on this different world.

Ride the Technology Wave to Greater Success
Social networking is here to stay and growing at an amazing pace. Groundswell provides case studies and data from several different industries to highlight the groundswell of new technology that is bursting into and driving the business scene.

Your customers and employees have ever increasing options to enter into public discussion. If you don't yet understand blogs, wikis, and various social network sties, this book explains how these technologies work. Most valuably, it shows how companies can manage the technology to improve customer service, strengthen employee communication and make themselves more successful.

The wave of technology will continue to swell and you don't want to get wiped out by it. This book is a valuable read in learning to master that wave and ride it to success.

Mollie Marti, PhD
www.bestlifedesign.com
Author of The 12 Factors of Business Success

Awesome overview of Social networking strategies for business
With all the talk about myspace, facebook, and social networking it can be very confusing to try and figure out, how does a business market themselves in this new arena? Do we create a blog, start a myspace page, post videos on youtube? all the above? Charlene does a really good job using realworld case studies and experiences to show how a novice with social networking can potentially benefit from it's uses. By looking at your objectives, the habits of social networkers, and the tools availble this book makes it much easier to make intelligent decisions on paths your business may want to take. Easy to read, I'd highly recommend it.