Comments on: Groundswell Learnings – Part 1

By: 75% of Internet Users Now Engaged in Social Media « Social Media Snippets

75% of Internet Users Now Engaged in Social Media « Social Media Snippets — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:07:35 +0000

[...] and the great work they do in analyzing social media user demographics with my assessment of Groundswell Part 1 and Part 2. When I think about “bleeding edge” leaders with regard to social media [...]

By: Groundswell Learnings - Part 2 « Social Media Snippets

Groundswell Learnings - Part 2 « Social Media Snippets — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:57:27 +0000

[...] Learnings – Part 2 In my previous post, I talked about how the authors of Groundswell put a great deal of emphasis around the importance [...]

By: Writer Dad

Writer Dad — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:42:34 +0000

This book sounds phenomenal. Thanks.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:58:33 +0000

Thanks for stopping by Cath, David and Campbell. David, some great points, right on the button. It is time, it is money, it’s an investment. Relationships obviously don’t build overnight and it’s still a hard sell to get management to understand the long term benefits. I look forward to your post.

By: Campbell Scott

Campbell Scott — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:20:42 +0000

Groundswell is well researched and thought through and has the shelf life you talk about.

I’ve been promoting the idea of using the same type of approach, to understand and categorise how brands might embrace social media. Some of my thoughts on this are here http://bit.ly/1V5DFj

By: davidmullen

davidmullen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:52:59 +0000

Cool that you’re sharing what you’re learning as you read. Groundswell is next on my reading list, so it’ll be good to go into with some nuggets you have/will share here already in my head.

In terms of the challenge re: tools vs. relationships. Based on my experience and what others have shared with me, I believe most marketers struggle and/or are apprehensive with the concept of relationship building for three reasons:

-You have to hear things about your brand that you may not want to hear.
-Relationships take a lot of investment in the time and energy category.
-Many marketers are on short leashes and need results next quarter. While there are some tangible ROI metrics with SM, relationships take time to develop and you can’t measure all the benefits in hard and fast ways to share with the CEO. How do you put a value on having 2,000 followers on Twitter like @comcastcares? Or on dispelling a rumor before it really has a chance to take off? With the pressure that’s put on most CMOs to report results today, relationships are a hard sell. It can take a few years to begin seeing some of the really great results and the average tenure of an American CMO is two years.

I had actually planned on writing a blog post on client fears regarding social media and ways we can help ease them later this week, so look out for that.

By: Cath Lawson

Cath Lawson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:17:07 +0000

Hi Scott – you make some great points here. I think a lot of folk struggle to understand that social media is far more than a self promotion tool. It’s a great way to build relationships if it’s used properly.