Chapter 12 – The groundswell inside your company

Connecting with your employees is as important as connecting with your customers. Employees can be your energizers. Employees may already be on the same social networks, wikis, and participating in communities.

Internal groundswells can offer the opportunity to listen, to talk to, and energize employees who already believe in your brand. It can offer the chance to support employees and embrace their enthusiasm.

Employees are the first line of defence, they hear customer complaints directly, they work through the day-to-day problems themselves, and they’ve likely already thought up solutions to the problems. The corporate world have embraced wikis, recognizing that employees can offer insight and solutions to one another.

Embracing the internal groundswell means offering new ways for employees to engage with each other. Management must listen to what is being said, as employees have a lot at stake when they put it out there and let their opinions be known. Ease your employees into the internal groundswell. Participation is key, but it needs to be voluntary or it won’t be honest. Like you would seek out your brand enthusiasts outside the company, find the same type of people internally and encourage them.

Encouraging the groundswell internally means developing and nurturing relationships. This is the key to its success.

Like every other business, WIN House can and should energize their own internal groundswell. Employees  work in a non-profit because they are passionate about the work. Take this passion one step further, engage the employees to connect with each other through social media. Share their passion with each other with the help of technology. This is one more way for these dedicated employees to generate ideas and expand their horizons.

This is my last post for school. This course has opened my eyes to the power of social media. As a “joiner” I already belonged to and used many of the platforms we explored in class but I hadn’t realized how beneficial they could be to business endeavours. In my personal life, over the course of this semester, I’ve watched a friend struggle through a problem and take to social media (FB and Twitter mostly) to energize friends and supporters – and it worked! They influenced the government to change their stance and offer the support they should have been providing all along. Social media is a powerful tool that can be harnessed in a variety of ways.

This was a great class and I’d recommend it to business owners and fellow business students.

Cheers,

Barb

Reference:

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press

Image retrieved from https://www.juiceinc.com/blog/show/beyond-engagement-why-energized-employees-get-better-results

Chapter 7 – Energizing the Groundswell

A ring of people marching with bullhorns

Getting your customers to want to spread the word about your company, voluntarily and enthusiastically, is what is known as energizing the groundswell. Word of mouth is information coming from customers and it is successful because it is believable, self-reinforcing, and self-spreading (groundswell, 2011, p.130). Word of mouth is honest because its not the company tooting its own horn, its customers sharing experiences. Tapping into this honest, passionate message is energizing the groundswell. The value of this comes from customer recommendations. A customer who will promote your product or company will tell their friends, and they’ll tell their friends (and so on, and so on). In fact, word of mouth can be so effective that there are companies who pay for critics to talk about your product.

Paying for someone to talk about your product online can be costly. You can get people talking yourself by connecting with your customers. Offer an online community and participate in it. Give your enthusiasts and opportunity to engage with ratings and reviews. Know the social technographic profile of your customers and meet them where they are.

Companies like Constant Contact, an email marketing company, relies on word of mouth to sign up new referrals to the community. This activity energizes customers, spawns conversations, and creates revenue.

Energizing the customers can be risky, since you’re leaving them to talk about your brand. Some will be enthusiastic and speak highly of you and your product. Some won’t. Getting your base energized and talking about you can transform your company.

References

Li, C., & Bernhoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press

Image retrieved from https://www.google.ca/search?q=energizing+customers&biw=1088&bih=475&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMIgv3X5eadxwIVEA6SCh1CXg4a#imgrc=JabP2f3EjV-b5M%3A