Brand Monitor: Goals and Recommendations

   From this month’s brand monitor, I got a better look of Chevrolet’s social media marketing. There are things we can learn from them and there are things they need to improve. For a company has been in the market for a century, Chevrolet has done a wonderful job on social media marketing. It abandoned the traditional methods and adopted new methods and technology. There is still space for improvement.

    There are three goals for Chevrolet in order to improve itself. First, Chevrolet should maintain the American market by energizing and embracing the groundswell. Even though the book “Groundswell” mentioned that companies should let go of groundswell, Chevrolet should not completely let go. Letting go does not mean no any care or responds. Chevrolet did a great job on tapping into customers’ enthusiasm with ratings and reviews and creating a community to energize its customers. However, it does not participate in and energize online communities of its brand. Chevy should get more involved with its groundswell, and make the groundswell feel that they are not alone and their voice could be heard. Chevrolet should check the social technographics profile of its customers and find out what its customers’ problems are. Free information is provided online, and Chevrolet can make the best of it. After finding out what the problems are, they should do some adjustments on their products or services.

    Second, Chevrolet should be more competitive and enthusiastic. No matter for its customers or its competitors, Chevy did not show its enthusiasm enough. Like it is said in the book “Groundswell”: “A community is like a marriage; it requires constant adjustment to grow and become more rewarding.” If Chevrolet does not show its support and care to its customers, the customers will complain about that Chevy ignores them. Sooner or later, they will leave Chevy. Chevrolet has to be more competitive than before. Being better than other competitors is another way to gain customers. Chevy has to be more active on the Internet activities than other companies in order to appeal public’s attention. People can only see the best, so Chevy should do the best to be seen.

    Chevy should connect the groundswell with the company itself and make the groundswell spread to other countries. It would have strong impact if Chevrolet involves their executives in their social media marketing plan. Having executives involved in the marketing plan is more persuasive and it can drive innovative marketing to another level. It would be better to take small steps that have big impact at first in case the big projects cost more money and have risks that it might not work.  It will be necessary to build websites and Facebook pages in other target countries in their languages. It has to tap, energize and embrace the groundswell all over again to gain customers in other countries. Then the expanded groundswell will bring benefit back to the company. They will raise the sales and make Chevrolet well known.

Reading#3: Believe in Groundswell

   For the people who did not get the chance to get to know social media marketing and how well the groundswell can work, they do not know how important to have social media marketing strategy. The groundswell impact is hard to build and takes a long time. Most companies and individuals aren't willing to invest that much money and time to gain the results they don't even know if they will get. Therefore, we have to be patient to the groundswell, and believe in it. 

    In the book Groundswell, the author used two successful cases to tell the audience how to connect with the groundswell transforms your company. Groundswell needs to spread with a customer-centric organization. The author suggested you want to create your own mini-groundswell within the company to embrace the groundswell of customers outside it. There are tree essential elements to this transformation. First, it is important to take step by step. Unilever did this. They chose small customer groups and succeeded. The key was they all had measurable success metrics that were tied to key marketing goals. Unilever lets us know you will gain more support for groundswell thinking if you can show a series of successes that have impact. It is necessary to have a plan and a vision. Each little plan supports to build a natural program. Organizations have to look far ahead in order to make the goals clear. It is better to have executive support. You need to have someone has a voice, and bring more attention. The groundswell feels themselves heard, when they know they get more attention.

    Dell’s story tells us that even though it has a lot of difficulties when it starts, don’t give up. Dell used step-by-step strategy. They transformed their customers one by one by listening first and acting later. This needs energy and patient, of course the belief in groundswell. Executive has to realize the impact of groundswell and push it. Dell couldn’t get anywhere in the groundswell until it honestly admitted its flaws. There is an old Chinese saying “People have bright eyes”. They see your flaws, and you need to admitted and improve yourself. This is how groundswell works. If people talk about your brand, you don’t do anything to respond the audience, you will lose them all someday.    

Dell

    Organizations usually forget they have a small groundswell inside their companies. These employees are just like a group of customers, and how to energize them to go out and talk to other people about your brand. The groundswell inside your company will do the mouth-to-mouth advertisement for you for free. Why don’t we make the best of it? Groundswell is just like everything else. It needs follow-up maintain. It needs someone to be there to take care of all the customers, and make sure the groundswell to be heard.

    Even though building groundswell takes more time and effort than we expected, it would come back to us eventually. So have belief in Groundswell. 

O#3: New Generation of Technology: APPs

    25 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple app store. That's a lot of apps. The winner is a Chinese and won 10,000 dollars app store credit. Since Apple app store's creation, 14 billion apps had been downloaded by March/April 2011. Less than a year later, app store had its 25 billion downloads. The speed of its development is incredible fast. 

    
It is amazing how fast the apps has been developed. It started for iPhones and iPods and later on there are more apps available for iPads. With the development of iPads, the speed of increasing apps has been faster than ever. 

History of Mobile Apps

   
    I have tons of apps on my phone and some of them are incredibly useful. I use online banking app to check my account balance at anytime and anywhere. One of the benefits of apps is that they can provide the functions you need without the limits of time and places.   Plus, the network can not be more convenient nowadays. You can get internet access easily through your 3G phone network and wifi. 


    The easy access of internet has provided a platform for the apps' development. Everything you can imagine can be provided in applications. People don't have to rely on computers, and phones and tablets devices are lighter than computers and laptops. We should take advantage of apps, and make the best use of them.