Between reading Groundswell I’ve also been reading Here Comes Everybody, which discusses the social impact of web 2.0 technology and the ways that people mobilise around issues that concern them by forming online groups and so on.
And it dawned on me that, unless I’ve missed something, the writers of Groundswell have made a bit of an assumption around customers and their use of web 2 tools.
Their book suggests that if you figure out who your target customers or users are, decide why you want to communicate with them (e.g. to get ideas from them for new products, to promote new services to them, etc), and then understand how these users make use of web 2.0 tools (ie. their “social technographic profiles”) – well then all you need to do is use these tools and magically customers will communicate with you.
Except that they probably won’t.
The piece that seems to be missing is what Clay Shirky talks about in Here Comes Everybody. Its something he calls “Promise”. Another way of thinking of it is the “what’s in it for me” factor.
For example, just because an organisation has identified its target users as being “critics” (in Groundswell’s social techno profile) – due to the fact that they tend to rate products and comment on blogs – doesn’t mean they will do this on matters of interest to the organisation.
Forrester charges for access to its detailed information on social technographic profiles but I wonder whether the info considers this dimension – not so much exactly which groups use what web 2.0 tools but also what they talk about when using them. WHY they choose to use them. The “what’s in it for me” element.
Maybe I’ll find out by the end of the book.
Bulletproof Web Design
Designing with Web Standards
Wikinomics
After writing this post, I read more of the book.
The writers do make the point that naturally, the use of web 2 tools with customers won’t work for all organisations. There are some things better suited than others for online conversations.
And though the book is filled with lots of examples of organisations where it has worked (e.g. Lego, Dell, BearingPoint, eBags), they recognise that figuring out what will work with your own customers is the biggest challenge.
They have good suggestions for these types of organisations, like using closed communities and paying selected customers to visit them and talk.
And creating communities around topics rather than the products concerned (e.g. a tax community rather than an Intuit user community).
I agree its the most difficult part, though – figuring out how to get the customers who use the tools generally, to use them to talk about things that will help you.