Some interesting things about Groundswell

We created an acronym for  the four-step planning process, starting with these questions, that you should use to build your groundswell strategy. We call it the POST method, for People, Objectives, Strategy, and technology. Post is the foundation of groundswell thinking - a systematic framework for assembling your plan. Let's walk through the four steps in a little more detail:

• PEOPLE. What are your customers ready for? What's important is to assess how your customers will engage, based on what they're already doing. Skipping this this step and making guesses about your customers might work, but you might also build a whole social networking strategy only to find that your customers are more likely to write reviews than join social network.
• OBJECTIVES. What are your goals? Are you more interested in talking with the groundswell for marketing, for example, or in generating sales by energizing your best customers? Or are you interested in tipping the groundswell internally to help your employees work together more efficiently? 
• STRATEGY. How do you want relationships with your customers to change? Do you want customers to help carry messages to others in you market? Do you want them to become more engage with you company? By answering this question, not only can you plan for the desired changes up front, but you can also figure out how to measure them once the strategy is under way. You'll also need to prepare and get buy-in from people within your company who may be threatened by changes in these customer relationships.
• TECHNOLOGY. What applications should you build? After having decided on the people, objectives, and strategy, you can move on to pick appropriate technologies.