While I was contemplating a passage in the final chapter (12. the future of the groundswell) of groundswell, I received an email notification on my iPhone. How ironic and appropriate. The passage from 2008, "The net result of all this accelerating activity is that the
groundswell is about to get embedded within every activity, not just on
computers, but on mobile devices and in the real world." (p. 235), was foretelling what was to be arriving by email in 2013 on my mobile phone: "LinkedIn Today-Top news for Terri: Five Ways Free Online Classes Will Change College, or Not."
Li and Bernhoff were imagining in 2008 how far online social media and the groundswell would go. So far their guesservations have been correct. Many of us are now receiving all sorts of notifications on our smart phones: by Facebook, twitter, YouTube, email, news feeds to name only a few. Blogs and dashboards are commonplace, and many companies have intranets and wikis for their businesses.
Li and Bernoff conclude groundswell "with some advice, not on what to do but on how to be" (p.239). They leave us with seven principles of groundswell thinking:
- Groundswell is about person-to-person activity
- Be a good listener
- Be patient
- Be optomistic
- Be flexible
- Be collaborative
- Be humble (p. 240)
The wonderful thing about it is that everyone has access to social media and online marketing. Small
business like Foiles Migrators have just as good a chance at becoming
successful as large corporations, such as Nabisco's (snackworks) Oreo, as long as they follow the seven principles of groundswell thinking and utilize social media marketing to its full potential.
Foiles Migrators have become very successful using social media to create a following on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to promote their goose and duck calls at an expense of $0.
They created a community on their official website which keeps their customers coming back. If they haven't read groundswell, I'd be surprised, because it appears that they are following the seven principles of groundswell thinking.
Personally, had I not become part of the groundswell during the last few months in this class, I would not have had the person-to-person activity and had the opportunity to read and learn from my class mates' blogs: I wouldn't have read Den's blog and decided to become more engaged on my LinkedIn account and have it feed to my iPhone. I wouldn't have read Katrina's blog and decided to create a twitter account. I wouldn't have read Eileen's blog and become more interested in Pinterest.
The seven principles of Li and Bernoff are timeless principles to use in every aspect of business, social media and social media marketing. I can't wait to see what the next five years bring for social media marketing and the groundswell. Maybe we should ask Li and Bernoff.
This YouTube video shows Charlene Li
speaking in 2010 to a group of journalists after her keynote at the
Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) conference about the future
of social media and the groundswell.
It is true that small companies have the same access to social media and everyone can make a difference; this is the benefit of social media. Also, I learnt a lot from classmates' blogs. I kind of behind schedule of posting and reading, and thanks to Blogger, we can always go back and learn. My goal is to read everyone's blog before sunset!
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