Groundswell – Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

Groundswell

My brother gave me a great gift for my birthday this year. He gave me Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Forrester Researchers Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I first heard about the book back in April at TIA’s TravelCom 2008 conference in Chicago. Charlene Li was one of the speakers and her session was titled: Welcome to 2013: The Changes in Technology and Consumers that Will Affect Your Business.

Her session was one of the most enlightening at the conference and it really lit a fire in me to begin working on more social media initiatives or the “groundswell” as she calls it.

This is a book that is a must-read for anyone thinking about getting into social media, and that should be every single one of you.

Not only does the book do a great job of explaining what the groundswell is, but it also gives you a breakdown of several different “groundswell technologies” – many of which I talk about here on the Tourism Tech Corner – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS, blogs, wikis and more.

One other benefit of the book is that, as Forrester Research employees, Li and Bernoff include solid numbers in the book that you can bring to your board of directors when you’re intersted in diving into some of these groundswell technologies. It might seem a bit silly to read a book about social media seeing as how it changes so quicky, but Groundswell was published this year, so it’s surprisingly up-to-date. That being said, you can be sure that the groundswell technology penetration percentages have climbed even since the printing of the book. I just read in the book last night that 8% of US online conusmers use RSS, and I just read that Forrester’s newest research puts that number at 11% now.

If you’re not quite ready to put down the money for the book, you can check out a PDF excerpt at the Groundswell website or read (and subscribe to via RSS) the Groundswell Blog. This is a book that won’t disappoint you.