1. STRATEGIES FOR TAPPING THE GROUNDSWELL Rachel Caldwell, Herschel James, Endia Moore

2.  People know they need to get involved with the Groundswell, but they’re nervous about moving forward. Groundswell Approach-Avoidance Syndrome:

3. Symptoms of Approach-Avoidance:  Strong interest in blogosphere and in online doings at sites like Facebook and YouTube.  Excessive salivation upon hearing much-repeated stories of corporations that have developed partnerships with social networking sites, started online communities, or otherwise managed to get held up as winners in news reports and at marketing conferences.

4. Symptoms of Approach-Avoidance:  Checking the megablogs techcrunch.com and gigaom.com multiple times per day to make sure you are as up to date as possible on all social media and Web 2.0.  Increasing nervousness about answering superiors’ and subordinates’ questions about the company’s “online strategy in the Web 2.0 era.”  Asking your teenage kids, “What’s up with this MySpace thing” and listening intently for ideas you can use at work.

5. Symptoms of Approach-Avoidance:  Anxiety at the thought of actually participating in social technologies, balanced by similar anxiety at the thought of missing out.

6. Causes of Approach-Avoidance:  Starting by thinking about technology.  Technology is changing so quickly and trying to follow it directly is impossible.  Cure: Ask yourself “What are my customers ready for?” and then “What are my objectives?”

7. Four Step Planning Process:  POST: People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology  People- What are your customers ready for? It’s important to access how your customers will engage, based on what they’re already doing.  Objectives- What are your goals? You have to set goals before you know what you’re planning for.

8. Four Step Planning Process:  Strategy- How do you want relationships with your customers to change? By answering this question, not only can you plan for the desired changes up front, but you can also figure out how to measure them once the strategy is underway.  Technology- What applications should you build? After you’ve decided on the first 3 steps, you can move on to pick the appropriate technologies. (blogs, wikis, social networks, etc.)

9. Objectives Companies Can Pursue:  Listening- Use the groundswell for research and to better understand your customer. Best for companies that seeks customer insights in marketing and development.  Talking- Use the groundswell to spread messages about your company. Best for companies that are ready to extend your current digital market to things such as banner ads, search ads, and email.

10. Objectives Companies Can Pursue:  Energizing- Find you most enthusiastic customers, and then use the groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth.  Supporting- Set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other.  Embracing- Integrate your customers into the way your business works. This is the most difficult of the five goals, and its best suited to companies that have succeeded with one other four goals already.

11. Objectives Companies Can Pursue:  Each one of these can make a powerful impact for your company. But if you don’t enter the groundswell with a specific goal, you will fail.

12. Business-to-Business:  The groundswell is not just for consumers. Groundswell can be used by businesses too, although it is a lot harder to use. Business people are people to. Although you won’t find a business commenting on a blog, people do blog. In a business-to-business setting, picking an objective first is still the best practice. You would treat a business person the same as you would a consumer. Come with an clear objective or you’re just as likely to fail.

13. Thinking through a strategy :  Companies that want to get into groundswell but don’t know how have to get into the process of thinking strategy.  A company that wants to get into groundswell and be effective has to start somewhere. Ex. A clothing company wants to get into groundswell but not sure how so they went out and learned more about social interactions and groundswell and started thinking but they had no idea how to really get things started.

14. Strategy Tips for Groundswell:  1.Create a plan that starts small but has room to grow Create a rough plan – what you will do first, measure success if there will be any and if you are successful build on that success. Also revise your plan every 6 months for accuracy.  2. Think through the consequences of your strategy. You should consider how groundswell will change your company as well as your customer base. Think long term over the years at how it will change the structure of your company as well as relationships with suppliers and distributors.

15. Strategy Tips for Groundswell:  3.Put somebody important in charge. If you are thinking of changing your relationship with your customers you would want to make sure everything works and the person in charge knows what they’re doing. Give governing power to someone who can handle it. Usually that person would be a mid to high-level IT worker or CIO and they must brief the CEO on all major and minor decisions.  4.Use great care in selecting your technology and agency partners. Trust someone to handle you technological needs who is more than qualified to and experienced enough to give you exactly what you are looking for. Read reviews and do research on agencies who have done what you are looking for. They also need to understand your needs and exactly what you want out of them.

16. In strategy planning for groundswell things can go wrong In order to prevent minor or major problems:  Be constantly aware of the challenges you face and be prepared to take immediate action to fix them.  Most common resource of failure relates to the four elements of the post process: Failures in accessing peoples tendencies. A weak definition of objectives. Failure to think through strategy. Poor technology implementation.

17. Things That Could Happen  You could have a profile mismatch in which you build strategies that are ill suited to the capabilities of your customers.  To avoid this problem create something that goes with your customers technographic profile and one that they will participate in.  Some customers might give negative feedback or you may not have control over what you have related.

18. Things That Could Happen:  In those instances thinking thoroughly through all of the possible consequences and recruiting a sponsor who won’t leave at the sign of trouble, but work quickly to diminish the problem; you can minimize the chances of falling in that strategic trap.

19. There’s NO going back  You cannot ignore the trend.  Customers are more tech savvy now then ever.  Proven results and a higher success rate than fail rate.  Every good idea needs a strategic plan.  Different ways to reach out to new and different customer markets.

20. Conclusion:  Assembly of basic elements you need to build a Groundswell strategy  Choosing a primary objective  Taking action