I finished the reading of chapter1-6 of Charlene Li and Josh Bermoff’s Groundswell at yesterday. And I keep thinking about it all the time. I always think I am good at using social media tools and know all the things about them, my friends also treat me as an expert, but now I know I am still in the “kindergarten” stage.
Social media networking become more and more important during these years and everybody starts to use them. In this web2.0 world, online social network can provides us more ways to contact with the extensive social capital. It is a huge resource, which can bring knowledge, opportunities, support, and good reputation to us. It will make us be able to accomplish more trade, get more respect, and even get a better job. And we can show more personal information, all kinds of skills, and can obtain others’ help and attention at the same time.
A lot of people (like me) understand social media on a personal usage level, but not when using it for business. In chapter 1 of Groundswell, the authors discuss the importance of companies joining the social media movement. That is because that social media is no longer for us just talking about what party they we will attend this weekend. Social media has evolved into a new way to talk about you, your company and what you do. The authors introduce different type of technologies of the groundswell and show both how they threaten companies and how we can benefits from them, and also introduce the way to evaluate a social networking.
Believe it or not, social media marketing can help your business. But, it is possible to waste a lot of time, so make sure you have a plan. Charlene Li and Josh Bermoff created a four step planning process called the POST method, witch is the foundation of groundswell thinking. The POST stands for people: I think the customers are the most important part in business, so we should know what your customers are ready for; objective: we should clear our goals; strategy: how do you want relationships with your customers to change? And technology: what applications should you build. To achieve your goals, Charlene Li and Josh Bermoff identified five primary objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing) that companies successfully pursue in the groundswell. I learned the listening and talking part from chapter 5 and 6, that is you should do well communications with your customers online. While social media is free, the big resource it takes up is time — blogging takes a lot longer than Facebook (but blogging has such great return). Twitter takes more time than you think. Even you spend a lot of time on it; you may still get negative feedback. However, you should be open to it. I’d rather know when people weren’t happy so I could fix it in time.I can’t wait to learn more from my groundswell!
I have found your opinion quite interesting, and I agree with your opinion that social media maketing can help your business, using social media, you can let customers more familiar with your product and make more profits for your company.
回复删除Sarah. It is great that you have a comprehensive and clear summary from chapter 1 to chapter 6. Social media could help people do business. The video you provide with is easily understanding and logical. I think the video mentioned "be ready" is really important for doing business well. Good preparation means half a success. If you could apply your personal feelings about how to apply these measures to practical usage, we could know more about you.
回复删除I think it's funny that you refer to yourself at the "kindergarten stage" of social media. After reading your blog post, I have to disagree. I think you have a really good understand of the importance of social media and business as well the appropriate methods to use. If the post method tells us anything, it's that technology is the least important. You're very right that people are the most important. I really liked the video you included at the end of your post. It's a great summary of social media for the many people, who don't understand it as well as you.
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