The Future of the Groundswell is Now (reading reflection #3)

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:

1. Groundswell is about person-to-person activity
2. Be a good listener
3. Be patient
4. Be optomistic
5. Be flexible
6. Be collaborative
7. 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.

Slam/Dunk for Oreo (original #2)

During the power outage of 2013 Superbowl XLVII, Nabisco's Oreo  team showed what quick thinking and creativity can do.  They didn't get in the first advertising tweet regarding the power outage, but they were pretty close--and, in my opinion, their tweet, "Power Out, No Problem," was a slam/dunk compared to everyone else's.

"Power Out? No Problem"

According to Social Times and Forbes, The Oreo team was together in New York during the game, monitoring social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, through a dashboard created by Expion, a social media management software company, for reactions to their Super Bowl Whisper Fight commercial when the power went out.

Oreo used a bad situation during the football game to their advantage.  As it turned out, their power outage tweet was more popular than their original commercial.  Oreo's dunking in the dark tweet was re-tweeted almost 15,000 times gained about 20,000 likes and Facebook and and Oreo's Twitter following increased by 8,000.  I probably would have dunked some oreos if I had some, after that tweet.

Whisper Fight Commercial

I don't believe this was totally accidental.  Oreo is using its social networking correctly.  By hiring a social media management company to create a social media monitoring program/dashboard for them, they were able to see in real time what response/s they were getting to their Super Bowl commercial and to the spontaneous power outage tweet.  If they weren't together monitoring their dashboard, they most likely would have lost the opportunity to create a great ad with their tweet.  I'm sure this shows just the surface of what Oreo is doing to monitor social networks regarding their brand and product and I'm sure Expion was happy to get free publicity from Oreo's slam/dunk tweet.