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.