Groundswell

Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

By: Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff

Narrated by: Josh Bernoff

Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

A groundswell is sweeping through your customers. Right now, they are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They're defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you in social-networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon - the groundswell - that has created a permanent shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat.

It's time to see it an opportunity.

In Groundswell, two of Forrester Research's top analysts tell listeners how to turn the force of customers connecting to their own advantage. With 25 vivid cases from around the world - from health care to retail to consumer goods to business services - Li and Bernoff show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenue, saving money, and energizing their own customers. Whether listeners are in marketing, research, support, sales, development, or even running the whole enterprise, there's targeted advice here for them, backed up with real-world ROI to prove it works.

Groundswell is based on hard consumer data and experience with dozens of companies. The listener will hear how the marketers of Procter & Gamble proved that subtle marketing within a community was four times as effective as television...how Best Buy taps into the intelligence of over a thousand of its employees with its own social network...how Dell has transformed itself by embracing customer insights in nearly every department...and how a South African winery boosted its sales tenfold by tapping into the power of bloggers, YouTube, Facebook, and every other tool in the social technology arsenal.

This trend cannot be ignored. Listeners must learn how to ride the wave. There's no going back.

©2008 Forrester Research (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

great but

the ideas in this book are basic and not that many examples support the main arguments.

Groundswell

A wonderful overview of the ever changing and morphing informo-sphere. The book is an excellent pulling together of methods to take advantage of the internet. I good listen.

Great breakdown of social media for business

This was my first from these authors and I enjoyed their approach. It is a great introduction to the possibilities of social media integration in business. Foundational information to use if you are thinking of integrating social media or a great way to find new opportunities areas you may have missed.

A new label for Social Media

Forrester Research analysts coined a new term to designate the coordinated effect Web 2.0's social media has on business - A Groundswell.

The book written by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li offers very deep and substantial account, illustrated by many case studies, on the fundamental importance of social media for today's business.

I look at this book from two perspectives. The first one is purely analytical and concrete - here the book gives a lot of data, statistics, charts and illustrations. It is really as a kind of handbook on social media. It offers many interesting case studies, including social media adventures of companies like Lego, Dell, GM, Salesforce - to name a few...

The another perspective is rather reflective. Ten years ago, ClueTrain Manifesto almost predicted this swell called Social Media. Well, for ClueTrain authors the swell was already there.
In some sense, as with many far-reaching predictions - we wait much longer than initially anticipated. Today, it is Groundswell - the book, that fullfils, or , rather, describes the fulfillment of Cluetrain Manifesto.

I hope, the term, coined by Forrester analysts will survive as a very good label of the entire social media revolution and its meaning for business.

I tried...so help me I tried.

This book covers great material and is extremely thorough. But DO NOT buy the audio version. I am an unabridged audio book fanatic and I find that once in a while an author can read the material and pull it off (Michael Gerber and Jeff Jarvis for example).

I am sorry to be this blunt but I feel like I wasted money on this audio purchase. The biggest part of an audio book’s quality is its narration and this audio books narration should have been done by a professional narrator, not the author.

I would read this one not listen to it.

Good read for those getting started

I needed more information on social media to help an organization step into new media. I am a art director, web master, marketer and found this helpful and is a book I will listen to at least twice. Very slow start, though. The author also carries on a bit. Voice quality is good, but a bit boring. Wish I had a physical book to bookmark and highlight some of the details.

Very Thorough & Informative

This book is quickly becoming THE authority in marketing circles on the revolution of social media. Consumers are changing the way companies do business, and the major reason is because they now have a voice on the internet.

This book was written by the folks at Forrester after a very thorough review of the industry. It is sprinkled with fascinating case studies and real life examples of mistakes and successes to inspire other marketers like myself.

I highly recommend this audiobook and am now becoming a passionate advocate of the world of social media due to listening to this book.

Good read

I work as a part time webmaster and liked the book. It wasn't much new information but it sort of puts everything I already knew in better perspective.

I suggest reading it.

Great grounding on social media..

Stays away from the tool focused obsession in social media and instead focuses on the core impact and underlying phenomenon of this huge culture changing trend. The message transcends the tools of today(which constantly change) and will be just as meaningful when a whole new set of tools kicks in..i disagree about the narration not being good..i liked hearing the author, he was connected to the content and had plenty of energy and conviction in his reading...a professional narrator might read professionally but not have a clue about what they were reading...

Good Introduction to Social Technologies

The book presents a fairly simple framework for understanding how social interactions can be understood and leveraged by companies. Most of the book is case studies from real companies and their experiences engaging their customers online. The author's narration is fluid and engaging.

Audible, the rest of this review is for you. Just downloaded and used your app for the iPhone to listen to this book.

- I like the wireless downloads.
- I like the ability to add bookmarks.
- I like the button free control interface - but would like a better way to advance through a book than just by 30 second increments.

I don't like that the chapters in the audio book version do not correspond to the chapters in the printed book. I love listening to books, but reading them is more efficient. For some books, I'd like to do both. Trying to go back and forth between the audio and the print version of this book was frustrating because the chapters are different. (In the audio book, several chapters are collapsed into a single chapter)

Some books like this one contain tables and graphs that are difficult to visual in an audio book. It would be great if you made available an audiobook version that contained or linked to the visual content and if it was integrated into the listening experience. e.g. as the narrator is speak about it, the link to that visual appears on the display.