Week 3 - Technographics

Groundswell:

“Groundswell” is a social trend where people use social technologies to get what they need.
People use these technologies by:
* Generating blogs, web content and podcasts.
* Connecting in social networks and virtual worlds.
* Collaborating in wikis and open source.
* Reacting in forums, ratings and reviews.
* Organizing content with tags.
* Accelerating consumption with RSS and widgets.

There are five main objectives (aligned with business functions) for participating in social technology such as Twitter:
* Listening (Research) – mentions of our company
* Talking (Marketing) – useful, helpful tweets
* Energizing (Sales) – finding people who write about you and re-tweeting
* Supporting (Support) – customer support
* Embracing (Development) – get ideas on how to improve products
“Don’t bother setting up a Twitter account and tweeting links to your press releases–you won’t get a whole lot of followers. Instead think about what you can offer that might get picked up and repeated by others.” (Groundswell, page 203)

The greatest contribution of groundswell is possibly the classification of different types of users of social media as =
* Creators – may create blogs, websites, etc.
* Critics – participate in communities, blogs, commenting, etc.
* Collectors – bookmark websites
* Joiners – join communities e.g. Facebook
* Spectators – just read
* Inactive – don’t use social media at all