Josh Bernoff – the Forrester warhorse on digital media, opens the second day with a preview of the book he co-authored with Charlene Li — Groundswell. Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.
Being a wave geek, let’s digress and look at the definition of a ground swell – essentially it’s a subtle heaving of the sea, a “sub-wave” generated by activity such as a storm hundreds of miles away. It’s the foundation of oceanic wave structure. It can be flat calm, with no ripples on the surface, but the sea can subtly heave and pulse due to the momentum effects from the distant event. (I feel like a coprolite this morning, so I am out of Chicago at noon to try to make it to a bed before I slip into what feels like an incipient flu)
End of digression, Bernoff is providing a framework with case examples
- Listening: cancer treatment facility that listens to patients complaints about scheduling
- Talking: Let fans spread the message more easily through social networks.Adidas on MySpace as more effect impressions than banners.
- Energizing: help best customers recruit others. Sales strategy. Guy who gets worked up about his laptop bag he bought on E-Bags where customers are asked to review their product. Zipper breaks. He beefs. Company contacts him, takes suggestions to factory. Guy becomes a fanatic. Brand ambassador programs.
- Supporting: Talks about “Predator” guy – Dell support forums. “I actually enjoy helping people.” 473K minutes online in Dell forum helping users. Enable customers to help customers with their problems.
- Embracing:
involving customers in product development. Salesforce.com cited. Idea-Exchange, people suggesting improvements. Vote capability.
Now Bernoff is pitching ROI of an executive blog. As David Armano said yesterday, you know you’re at a Forrester conference when ROI gets invoked. ROI of Support Forum – I buy into that. Blog shouldn’t need an ROI justification – if it needs one, to quote Christine Hefner, polish up the resume and look for another company. But forum ROI – very key as there are some substantial economic benefits around call-reduction/avoidance.
Q&A: how do I get one of them there communities? Just add water? There are actually vendors who do it. Hmm. I can see why you’d need to hire pros if you’ve never moderated a seething flame fest …..
What does SMM do to traditional marketing functions – like email? Email?
(Jeremiah Owyang – formerly of Podtech, now a Forrester analyst, is collating conference blogs at http://web-straegist.com/blog)
(Word is actually a good tool for conference blogging)
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while you are at Forrester, I’m out babysitting sheep and later taking AJ out shooting my assalt rifle and then fishing at Fuller Lake. Pray for me.
happy tractoring!
Jim
What color are the sheep? Did you go with tie-dye?
Assault rifles? Tye-dyed sheep? Sounds like lamb chops are back on the menu boys…
David, great point on the Q&A about community management. Just hiring a vendor is one thing, but they’ve got to get some internal talent ramped up quickly or it will fail. As we both know…
If anyone needs one o’ them community consultants, talk to me…
Mark — Jim is a one man BATF
on community consultants — as you know. I hate the term. But, otoh, if a client walks into Forrester and asks for a community because a competitor has a community — then who is going to build it? My first reaction is they need to be grassroots and authentic, but the more I think about it, the more I think people are you are needed to shortcut past the basic learnings that were so hard won in 1990s.
We need to talk, indeed, I need more of your consulting time soon.
Thanks for posting this, I’ll link to you from my post at:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/10/12/consumer-forum-day-2-revert/
Come up to the front row and say hi, there’s room up here for bloggers