Dealing with Groundswell: don't stop to listen

All the companies need to be promoted - that is an obvious truth. But the problem is HOW to do this. How to know what a company really needs on the certain step? How to protect your company from wasting advertising budget ineffectively? How to choose the right way of advertising? 

A simple answers on these questions is LISTEN. 

"Listening focuses on hearing what people are saying about your organization online" say Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, authors of the book named Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

Just listen to your customers and you will understand what they want, what they want you to change, what they like and dislike, which things you should pay more attention and etc. 

But the problem is it's not so easy to do. This one word imply a lot of other questions as, for example, Whom should I listen? 

How to listen? 

Where should I listen?

We all are living in the world of information and it's becoming more and more difficult to find the information you're really looking for. But it doesn't mean that it's impossible. You just need to know the certain tools and follow certain tips to do it. Here is some ideas advices how you can do it.

Nowadays you can even deal with a company which can do such research for you. It's very convenient in some cases.

In order to see how it works not in words let's consider some interesting casehow Groundswell was listened successfully.

Nike "Better for it"

Everyone knows Nike. It has a huge target audience. But what did they do in one of their recent advertising campaign? They decided again to focus on women.

The campaign's name is "Better for it".

Was it successful again? The answer is YES.

The campaign says:
"If you've got the drive to get better, Nike Women has the tools and gear to help you do it" which is very encouraging for women, doesn't it? 

The video has over 8,4 M views at the date. The main reason why it was so is how they show their understanding the way women thinking, their fears, their motivation.

The first comment for the video was
"It's not often I love commercials. But this one reminds us that everyone has insecurities and that we can accomplish anything, and I think that's a really special thing to focus on in an ad. :)" 

Reaction like this is exactly what Nike expected.

It's important to notice that it was created a brand community of women around Nike where every participant shared emotions - of understanding, of empowerment, of inclusion and etc.

That were just one example of right listening. 

An important thing that companies should remember is that Listening is just one of the first step of dealing with Groundswell. You should always have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and etc. for any case. That means that you should know step by step what you need to do after you find the information you need (to respond, to correct something, to act and so on).