Here are Benefits to “Goundswell Approach-Avoidance Syndrome”

Before I actually read Groundswell, I thought it mainly belongs to the typical kind of technology book which introduce some social media’s powerful features, more like guide book or resource book. After six chapters reading, it does have the foundation like introduce new trends and provide many ways to get involved in groundswell and supported by statistic and informatics. But more unique and important are the Charlenen Li and Josh Bernoff creatively explain “why”: why more and more people are involved in groundswell and why groundswell is powerful.

For me, I specially attracted by the strategies of how to make people who have pressure to move forward in new technologies, called “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” could stand out and get involved in groundswell. This is present in chapter 4.

In my friends circle, I’m the one who belongs to “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome”. I think everyone may have a type of friends like me, we know we need to get involved in new trends. And we actually could and maybe could a nice job, but we feel nervous to move forward and change. The jumping out new technologies is a kind of scaring, because it seems like we can never be an expert in this area. We will always be led to somewhere instead of we decide to go somewhere. This thought limited us to get more benefits from web world.

This problem is more notable in business world. Just like the example, a business owner thought he must be involved in groundswell, because the competitors are, but he didn’t know why. The authors list these “symptoms” like “checking the websites multiple times per day to make sure you are up to date as possible on all social media..as if you have run a half marathon while never getting anywhere at all” (66) or like you ask your teenage child about twitter. And explain with four steps to deal with the problem. To regard business as people, “business won’t response, but people will.” (70) four steps planning progress focus on “people” to know what your customer ready for; “objectives” to have goals; “strategy” concern about customers and goals to work out the relationship between you and customers; the last one “technology” with the first three elements, this step is clear, just focus on the particular one. and Li and Bernoff provide suggestion of how to make strategies to get start.

Authors provide quite clear tips for “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” to deal with their business with clear sense of direction and more relax to reach goals through groundswell. In China, most companies have the particular information department and work with customer serves department to develop website project to get customers involved in their marketing strategy, let people vote, leave reviews. And open up some social media belong with business brand like twitter, blog. And the “groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome” is exist in middle age boss, they have a career, know little about social media, and afraid of failure of information strategy. So I think this chapter is very helpful with specific solution, and explain why they need to get involve.