the groundswell reading refection #3

I have finished reading the book Groundswell this week. The last part of Groundswell talked about how the companies can enhance its internal interactions by embracing the power of Groundswell, in another words, how to nurture and foster an internal Groundswell.

Bernoff and Li use Bell Canada’s case study to tell us that” The internal groundswell is all about creating new ways for people to connect and work together, and to that end, it’s about relationships, not technology.” Many companies still not realize that groundswell is a very hard work, some of them think that social media is as simple as to create a blog. After reading the book I find out that it is difficult to operate a success groundswell for a company, as Bernoff and Li mentioned in the book that “Managing and maintaining successful relationships is the hardest thing in the world to do.” In this chapter, it shows that how social networks can help spark employee communication, how wikis can stoke collaboration, and how idea exchanges can harness innovation. Enhance the internal interactions in company will offer a better working environment for its employees, and the company will benefit eventfully.

The author talked about the future of groundswell in the last chapter. People are no longer locked up from others just because they picked a different social networking service, now, it is a big one, it’s groundswell. No matter what our lives will be, the groundswell is always changing and moving forward. At the end of the book Bernoff and Li taught us the principles of thinking which is very usefull: never forget that the groundswell is about person-to person activity, be a good listener, be patient, be opportunistic, be flexible, be collaborative and be humble.

Look back to the whole book, it provides an overview of what social media is at the beginning, and then it introduce some popular social media tools and how to use them. It also lays out some valuable strategies for getting involved in social media and discusses many of the successes and the pitfalls that a company can go through. As you can see, it covers a lot. I really enjoy this book and truly leant a lot.