Jul
I recently finished reading Groundswell by Forrester’s Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. I was particularly excited about it because about a year ago I was interviewed by Josh Bernoff for it as an active participant of Constant Contact’s user community. (The company I worked for was major business partner of CC) At the time I was just starting to get excited about social media as a business function and I was dying to know what these top notch analysts had to say about it. Especially since a big challenge of social media so far is (in my opinion) some excuse a lot of it for noise or time-wasting, and have a hard time seeing business value.
Well what else can I say but “Wow!” Josh and Charlene not only clearly explained theories, strategies and tactics, but also assembled a fantastic mix of real life case studies. I was even happy to see a few Canadian examples in there–Bell Canada and Loblaws.
I also love how they’ve put some easy to remember names for developing strategies, like the POST method. (Stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology and dictates the method & particular order for developing successful social media strategies). Also the book flows in the different stages of interacting with the Groundswell — First you listen, then you engage, then energize. (I think I’m missing some steps, but you’ll have to read the book to fully understand anyway)
One thing that really irked me, however, is that throughout the book they really pump up the social technologies profiling tool, developed by Forrester, and available free on the site. Sounds fantastic? Well it looks like it is, until you realize while it includes data from South Korea, Italy, Australia… There’s no Canada! Almost insulting as we are one of the more connected countries (ahead of the US!) and that I would suspect we have a proportionally higher ‘creator’ population (just my hunch though). Plus, of course, being attached to the US we do have a bit of a complex.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Jay Moonah of Toronto actually spoke up in the Groundswell discussion board. Josh replied and said that because of bad timing they were unable to include Canadian data, but it’s coming… Keep your eyes peeled!
Overall, however, a fantastic book I recommend picking up. Have you read it? What do you think? Let me know!
