Strategies for Tapping the Groundswell

talks about how companies are realizing that they need to start getting involved in social media (creating Facebook accounts, Twitter, blogs, etc.) but they aren’t surewhy.

Li and Bernoff created a 4 pronged approach for creating a groundswell strategy for companies called POST.  “POST is the foundation of groundswell thinking…”

1. People. What are your customers ready for?
2. Objectives. What are your goals? Are you wanting to talk within the groundswell for marketing or generating more sales? Or for tapping into the groundswell to help employees work together more efficiently?
3. Strategy. How do you want relationships with your customers to change?
4. Technology. What applications should you build? After having decided on the people, objectives, and strategy. (Ex: blogs, wikis, social networks)

According to this case, there are 5 primary objectives that companies successfully pursue in the groundswell:

1. Listening: best suited for companies that are seeking customer insights for use in marketing and development
2. Talking: best suited if you’re (the company) ready to extend your current digital marketing initiatives to a more interactive channel
3. Engergizing: works best for companies that know that they have brand enthusiasts to energize
4. Supporting: effective for companies with significant support costs and customers who have a natural affinity for each other
5. Embracing: most challenging of the 5, and it’s best suited to companies that have already succeeded with one of the other 4 goals.