Attaining maturity, embracing the future

Nowadays, in this high-speed development society, we can not do without a variety of social media. If we run a company and we want to promote our products better, shall we use the traditional promotion method or the promotion on the network? When our enterprises encounter difficulties and crises, what should we do on social platforms? These problems can be found in this book.

At the beginning of Chapter 13, an example of Home Depot is given. Once a loyal customer, on the network made a pessimistic post about Home Depot company, causing a huge network storm. The content is to say that Home Depot's service has deteriorated and gradually lost its confidence in Home Depot's products. Since then, in order to resolve this crisis, the company began to deal with the it: the top leadership was replaced, and the new leader immediately apologized for the company's mistakes on large social media. 

In the days to come, Home Depot will pay great attention to public relations on social media. The company has set up its own accounts in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It often replies to customers' questions and improves them, and targets professional treatment of problems. At the same time, they also show the improved progression on the platform. The company has set up a special social relations team to control the network crisis, and also integrates the operation mode of multiple social platforms. In the offline improvement, the company provides more professional staff for each community, and provides better service quality and professional guidance to customers. Gradually, Home Depot Company reestablished its image, also obtained the social maturity.

But it's not easy to attain social maturity. This point is mentioned in Chapter 13 and five difficulties are listed:

First, cultural issues. Companies can't control cultural differences and precise management system from top to bottom. Because both customers and employees have subjective consciousness.

Second, the perspective of the company. We should not blindly pursue the expansion of influence, but should start from small things.

Third, the problem of organization. The public relations team and the company should cooperate well. Once there is a crisis, the company can communicate well with customers.

Fourth, the risks on social platforms cannot be controlled perfectly, and there are many uncertain factors.

At the same time, the book also gives the content about the company's social maturity through four stages: the dormant stage, the testing stage, the coordinating stage, the scaling and optimizing stage, the empowered stage.

 

I will take the USAA mentioned in the article as an analysis. 

First of all, USAA has established a good relationship with its customers at a early stage. The company maintains contact with customers on a series of social platforms such as Facebook, and establishes a customer’s community with military background. Secondly, the company encourages customers to express their opinions on the platforms. The company encourages customers to launch posts on Facebook, interact with customers on Twitter, and provide video guidance and help for customers on YouTube. Communication with customers’ community is always the core task of the company. What's more, the company has developed different ways of socializing for employees to ensure that they are effective in communicating with customers.   

As for the future of Groundswell, I think the case of winery s in this article is enough to illustrate.

When Jason Korman, the owner of stormhoek winery, founded his own brand, he realized the importance of marketing. Because there are so many wineries in the world, if he follow the conventional marketing method, he would fail. What's more, Jason Korman known that traditional newspapers and other media, if invite them to promote and then get customers' approval, it would get half the results with double the effort. So he changed his strategy, sent wine to famous bloggers as gifts and encourage them to blog about wine on social platforms, thus rely on social media to quickly expand the market. In just a few years, Jason Korman has let his winery entered the era of great development through the use of multiple social platforms.

In my opinion, no matter how Groundswell will change in the future, as an enterprise, the first thing we need to do is to learn to listen to the needs of customers, because the needs of customers can increase our product sales. Secondly, enterprises should be good at talking with customers and establish a perfect community platform to encourage customers to participate in product discussion. 

Third, enterprises need to have enough patience to communicate with customers, so as to improve the shortcomings of products. 

Fourth, we should seize the opportunity to use appropriate means to avert danger when the crisis has reversed. 

Fifth, we should be good at flexibility and constantly adapt to the changes of things. 

Sixth, the various departments of the enterprise should cooperate well and unite well, otherwise, when the crisis comes, the enterprise will be like a loose sand and will be collapsed in the crisis. Seventh, leaders should be humble, do a good job in the business and learn more from the operational experience from other enterprises. 

Reference:

Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies ( Chapter 13 and 14 )

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From Baidu

Video:

From YouTube