Want to give your clients signed copies of Groundswell for the holidays?

Groundswell (the book) continues to spread. What excites me most is the number of times I hear "I gave copies to my staff/clients/customers to help them understand the trend." If you did this, I humbly thank you.You are the reason the book is still spreading 18 months after publication.

If you were thinking of doing this, let me gently encourage you by signing (up to 100) copies for your clients. I'll ship them back to you for free, too. We did this last year and people loved it, so why not do it again? Here's how it works:

• Email my research associate, Jenny Wise (jwise at forrester dot com) and copy me (jbernoff at forrester dot com) to let us know you're participating. Jenny can also answer any questions you might have.
• Buy at least 5 copies from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 800 CEO READ, or your favorite book supplier. Can't sign more than 100 copies per customer, sorry.
• Ship the books to us at Jenny Wise, Forrester Research, 400 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139. Telephone contact number 617 613 6000. Please get them to us by 15 December.
• I will sign them and add a short message of your choice. Nothing too salesy, please (think "Thrive in the Groundswell" not "My company is so great").
• We will ship them back you (any US address) at our expense within two business days of receiving them.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Groundswell Wins AMA's Berry Prize for Best Marketing Book

Just a quick note to thank the American Marketing Association for recognizing Groundswell with its 2009 Berry-AMA book prize for the best book in Marketing.

The association recognized Groundswell with these words:

Groundswell hit a real ‘sweet spot’ with the selection committee. Not only does it deal with crucial, cutting edge set issues of importance to both large and small firms, but it does so in very pragmatic fashion. Li and Bernoff present a very well-integrated framework for dealing with the array of decisions that must be made, and they provide vivid and compelling examples of the various ‘new media’ at work.

I'm truly humbled by this award, especially since it beat out "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely, which is truly a great book. In the year and half since Groundswell was published, I've enjoyed working with lots of marketers -- that's the most rewarding thing.

I feel a debt at this moment to Charlene Li, my coauthor, and to all of you in the groundswell who continue to help me see what matters to marketers. Keep doing great work, and I'll keep writing about it.

Announcing our next book "Harnessing the Groundswell"

by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

We've begun work on Forrester's next book about how technology changes business. While "groundswell" is in the title, the new book is not quite a sequel. Instead, it focuses on individuals empowered by technology -- both employees and customers -- and how businesses can efficiently turn them into a force for better performance.Here's a short description:

Harnessing the Groundswell: Drive Your Business With Empowered Employees and Customers

Who are these empowered people? They're employees using simple technologies to solve business problems -- but in ways management hasn't sanctioned. They're customers, armed with a sea of ambient information and friend connections, who redefine your brand. Either way, empowered individuals are a problem for locked-down and unprepared managers stuck on control. "Harnessing the Groundswell" explains how to enable, select, scale, and socialize this energy -- that is, how to embrace empowered individuals and use them to drive your business forward.

Harvard Business Press will publish "Harnessing the Groundswell" in summer, 2010. If you don't know Ted Schadler, he's a long-time, accomplished Forrester Research analyst and vice president in our IT business.

As you read the table of contents below, ask yourself: do I know a company that's doing this well (or poorly?). We're looking for case studies, and not just successes. So if you know a company that embraces its technology problem solvers or its fans, let me (Josh) know and we'll follow up. I look forward to your comments.

--

PART 1. Why Empowered People Are Driving Your Management Crazy
Individuals will always get the latest and best technology and services first. Why? Because that's the simplest path to market for device makers, publishers, social entrepreneurs, and other individuals. Because many of these technologies are mobile, they get into the enterprise regardless of corporate policies. This changes the dynamics of technology-led innovation forever.

Chapter 1. The forces that created empowered individuals
Chapter 2. How to act empowered (and how to manage people like that)

PART 2. Harnessing Empowered Employees
Individuals in the workforce bring their personal devices and experiences to work. The result? Innovation erupts in a thousand incremental, and sometimes disruptive, ways. With computing power available so cheaply in the Internet "cloud," employees can often create solutions with a budget they can charge on a credit card. Managers can either erect ever-higher walls in a fruitless effort to contain this disruptive energy or identify and harness the power of these improvements.

Chapter 3. A framework for managing empowered employees
Chapter 4. Empowered innovation [Leadership]
Chapter 5. Selecting and scaling solutions [IT]
Chapter 6. Socializing the enabled employees and solutions [Management/Collaboration]
Chapter 7. Hiring and retaining an empowered workforce [HR]

PART 3. Harnessing Empowered Customers
Your customers are using technology to gather any information they want. They have every Web site in the world to draw on, as well as their peers in social environments from Facebook to Twitter to blogs to customer ratings. And it's all coming to the mobile devices they take with them everywhere. A business that depends on the ignorance of its consumers is doomed. And in this environment, any service flaw is magnified and repeated endlessly. As a marketer, your best alternative is to become one of them – provide them with the very tools, information, and peer support they crave – and generate positive word of mouth through this enablement.

Chapter 8. A framework for managing empowered customers.
Chapter 9. Empowering customer service problem solvers [Customer Service]
Chapter 10. Empowering the mobile customer experience
Chapter 11. Selecting and scaling fans
Chapter 12. Socializing empowered customers: collaborating on innovation (10 pages)

PART 4. Leading the Empowered
Empowered people challenge management. The hierarchical management of large companies gets its power from standardization, rewards, and scale. But leadership in this new era does not mean being out of control. It means creating an environment where everyone knows the end goal and feels empowered to contribute, where attempts are lauded along with successes, and where scaling innovation is the true advantage.

Chapter 13. Leadership among the empowered
Chapter 14: The future

--

I can't wait to read your reaction.

Writing another bible

by Josh Bernoff

Many have said that Groundswell is a bible for companies using social technology. (Yes, I know there is a book that came out after ours called The Social Media Bible but indulge me for a moment here.) With apologies to my more religious readers (it's a metaphor, people), here are some qualities of the bible that I hope Groundswell shares.

• It helps a lot of people, so it sells a lot. (We're about 6 billion copies behind the other bible.)
• It’s full of useful advice (e.g. “Thou shalt not kill.” "Listen first before engaging the groundswell.")
• People get inspired by it and tell others to read it.
• It attempts to be the definitive authority on the topic.
• It uses stories to communicate messages.
• While it's useful by itself, it also creates an opportunity for people (priests, analysts) to spread and interpret the word further.

If you ever wanted to know what I'm doing next, here it is: I'd like to write another bible. We're looking at possible topics right now inside Forrester. They will be important, groundbreaking ideas for business; they won't necessarily be about social technology (since that bible's already written).

Assume any bible I write has the qualities I describe here. Keeping in mind that any future bible won't be out until spring 2010, what sort of bible would you like to read? Think big.

Photo from Robotlab, 2007, www.robotlab.de/bios/bible.htm , via Gastev

"Marketing in the Groundswell" -- a new way to reach marketers

We created a new spinoff of Groundswell just for marketers. This new edition includes only chapters 5 (Listening), 6 (Talking), and 7 (Energizing) from the original version. There is also a new introduction that talks about how valuable the groundswell is for marketing in a recession.

Groundswell continues to sell really well, often within Amazon's top 500 books, but we wanted to create this new version for a few reasons.

First, to make it cheaper and easier for marketers to get the book. The book lists for only $18, and is available on Amazon for just $12.24.

Second, this new edition is allowing us to get into new distribution channels like some airport displays, and to reach more people that way.

If you've already bought Groundswell or want the full version, don't bother with this. You already have this content. (Unless you have a fetish for green and yellow books, of course.)

However, if you know a marketer with a short attention span -- or maybe a department of a few hundred of them -- this is the quick way to get them up to speed.

The future of the Social Web, according to Forrester

by Josh Bernoff

Today we published our report about the future of the Social Web. Jeremiah Owyang did the research here, I was the editor (which means it was my job to make him think harder). As usual, the abstract is free, the report is available to clients. And see Jeremiah's post on the new report.

If you're preparing to participate in the Social Web, you need these ideas your mind. First, that with a common ID developing, the social experience is about to get a lot more frictionless. And second, that not just social networks, but every brand site will become social -- whether you include these features, or visitors bring them along.

So what should you do to prepare? First, get started with you social applications now, or you will be completely overmatched as social technology gets woven into the fabric of the Internet. And beyond that, focus more on finding your fans, since they and their friends and friends of friends will be your most important asset in this new world.

Additional Note: Facebook announced today it is further opening up its interface to outside developers. This reinforces the ideas in the report about how the social networks are becoming more deeply embedded into the total Web experience.

Groundswell is a bestseller. Thank you. And a few reflections.

by Josh Bernoff

Thank you for buying so many copies of Groundswell.

According to the July 3 issue of Business Week, we were a bestseller in the previous week. Number 15 out of 15 spots, but hey, we made the list -- most business books don't get close to that, especially with the staying power of books like "The Four-Hour Work Week" making it harder to climb up those charts.

We've been in the top 20 on Amazon's business books list and the top ten on 800-CEO-READ, which does corporate bulk orders, but this is the first bestseller recognition in a mainstream publication.

I'm reflecting a little on how we got here.

First of all, the speaking schedule has been brutal. When you write a book, you spend a lot of time alone. But despite all the wonderful online techniques, there's no substitute for shoe leather and airline miles -- people want to hear about it. It got to the point where I began to think that every businessperson in America must have heard Charlene and me speak. But at every new engagement, there were 20 or 100 or 700 new faces and most of them had never seen these ideas before. Generating word of mouth is hard work.

What I learned from talking to all of you is that first, there is a huge curiosity about Groundswell phenomena and business. Businesspeople really want to know how all this stuff works, who's doing it, which consumers are participating, and how. Concrete examples and statistics are wonderful things to talk about. It lets all the air out of the balloon (bubble?) and gives people something they can hold onto.

Sometimes I worry what will happen when we speak to a more Web 2.0-savvy audience, like the OMMA Social event I did last month. But even there, providing examples of real business value and a roadmap for strategy opened some eyes. For the insiders, it helps to have frameworks to work from and examples in appropriate business context.

So here are some takeaways from four solid months of talking about the book (and a little success).

1. Here's what people remember: Stories. Statistics. Frameworks. Make sure you have them. And tell them with flair.
2. The groundswell is about people. When you talk about this, make sure you talk about people -- both ordinary consumers and businesspeople. People can relate to this.
3. Everybody takes away something different. Charlene spoke Supernova recently and the person who wrote it up for Knowledge@Wharton wrote about our Mini USA brand monitoring example. Other people end up talking about Procter & Gamble's beinggirl.com or Dell's Flaming Notebook blog post or the POST method. The lesson is that you should have a lot of stuff they can hang onto because you never know what will catch an individual's imagination.

All of your support has been wonderful. I like to hear stories about people who bought one for everyone in your department, or all your clients. I'd love to stay on the bestseller list. I'm not going to tell you to buy more copies. What I really want is this:

• Tell your boss.
• Tell your friends.
• Tell your boss' friends and your friends' bosses.

That's how the groundswell discussion will go mainstream.

How to read a business book (according to Seth)

by Josh Bernoff

Seth Godin, in his post How to read a business book, recommends:

1. Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.

2. If you’re going to invest a valuable asset (like time), go ahead and make it productive. Use a postit or two, or some index cards or a highlighter. Not to write down stuff so you can forget it later, but to create marching orders. It’s simple: if three weeks go by and you haven’t taken action on what you’ve written down, you wasted your time.

3. It’s not about you, it’s about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action--that’s the main reason it’s a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.

Effective managers hand books to their team. Not so they can be reminded of high school, but so that next week she can say to them, "are we there yet?"

I wish everyone would do this. Groundswell is designed to be used just like this -- as a call to action for business use of social applications, with specific details on how to do it.

Are you reading Groundswell this way?

What could we do to help you with this?

How could this help with spreading the word?

Discuss.

Too busy to read Groundswell? I'll read it to you. (Audiobook)

by Josh Bernoff

Some of you like to read. Some don't. So we arranged to bring Groundswell out as an audiobook.

You can download it to your computer or iPod from Audible.com or iTunes. Now you can master social applications in the gym, or while commuting.

The audiobook includes nearly everything that's in the text, except for some of the figures and the notes. It's about 8 hours long. If you're looking for the CD version, that will be out this fall.

Some people who know me have said they could hear my voice as they read the text of the book. You don't need to wonder any more -- that really is my voice on this audiobook. I spent 15 hours in a recording studio on this. It is an interesting experience to record what you have written -- it was like reliving the experiences of the people we interviewed. The trick is to be interesting without being too dramatic. You'll have to let me know if I succeeded.

Here are are a few samples.

From the introduction (5 minutes, with both Charlene and me, introduces the book).

From Chapter 1 (16 minutes, introduces the idea and then gets you all charged up).

From Chapter 12 (4 minutes, Stormhoek Winery living in the Groundswell, some of my best writing).

If you want to embed these on your site go here.

Data chart of the week: international blog and user-generated video participation

by Josh Bernoff

In today's post we're showing off our international data capabilities with some data about participation in creating and consuming content in different geographies. This is the first table in Chapter 2 of Groundswell.

I find it amazing what a high degree of variability there is in this data. Note that this reflects percentage of online consumers only. These surveys were done between March and September of 2007.

The blog readership and commenting numbers in Japan and South Korea area astounding. I believe this is where North America is going. I'm at a loss to explain the relatively low level of participation in Germany  and the UK -- any ideas on why this is happening? In the UK, I don't know of any cultural reason why online participants should be reticent to read blogs -- I expect this to reach par with the US (or it may already have done so).

It's an interesting pattern that approximately half of those who read blogs comment on them, with somewhat fewer writing. I'd love to know why readership of blogs is higher in Japan, but writing blogs is more common in South Korea.

The US is the clear leader in both creation and viewing of user-generated video, which is at least partly due to the fact that YouTube is mostly in English. (I refuse to believe we have more idiots making idiotic video in the U.S. -- we don't have a way to survey that!) Given the very high bandwidth available in Japan and Korea I would have expected higher participation there -- is this cultural, or is it because there is more production quality video (on-line television) in these geographies?

Podcasts still haven't caught on the US after years of availability. And they're non-existent in Korea. I am skeptical that these numbers will increase significantly in the U.S. or that other parts of the world will surpass the U.S. number.

One note: we use different survey methodologies around the world (for example, what you see here came from mail surveys in Europe and online surveys in the U.S.) Also, the surveys were not taken in the same month. So direct comparisons are subject to significant variation that's not explained by geography.

If you found this data interesting, you can learn more. We have social technographic profiles from around the world available free. And clients can get access to all of our survey data.