Wiggio Social Media Monitoring Report

For those of you who read my previous post about Wiggio, it should come as no surprise that I’ve decided to do my social media monitoring project on it. Clearly, I’m ridiculously passionate about Wiggio and am loving every moment of being able to explore what people are saying about it.

Let me start by giving you a little bit of history on my relationship with Wiggio – In the summer of 2009, the summer between my junior and senior year of college, I landed an awesome internship with Cambridge-based Wiggio.com. Check out this 90-second “Claytorial” to get a better understanding for Wiggio if you don’t already know…



Besides the obvious need for a service like this, Wiggio is great because it was started by a college student looking to solve his own group woes. That summer I worked heavily in promoting Wiggio to college’s all across the United States. Having been a member of my college’s PRSSA (Public Relation Student Society of America), I thought it would be an excellent idea to contact chapter’s at different college’s in hopes of having their chapters promote Wiggio for us (for free!) in exchange for the great PR experience. Worked like a charm!

So why did I choose Wiggio for this monitoring project? Well, over the past two or so years since I’ve left Wiggio, it’s stayed close to my heart. The friendships I made with the people at Wiggio were invaluable and I constantly kept an eye on the progress and challenges they are facing. It was difficult, however, to stay too involved since I was over 500 miles away at Lynchburg College in Virginia (Go Hornets!). Now that I’m living back in Massachusetts, I’m hoping to reconnect with Wiggio and use as many avenues as possible to help them discover new and exciting ways to promote and improve the service.

My Monitoring Methods

On five specific days, March 1^st, March 8^th, March 13^th, March 21^st and March 28^th  I collected social media “snapshots” using various social media monitoring tools such as Addictomatic, Social Mention, Twitter and Google Insights. Take a moment to browse through what I found…

(If you’re in a crunch for time – take a look at the charts I’ve included and refer to the conclusion at the end!)

Findings – SocialMention

Strength, Passion & Reach

What’s interesting here, in looking at the strength, passion and reach, is that is seems to be relatively level, if not steadily increasing. (Great news!)

The most interesting thing I noticed was that the reach increased from 11% to 23% in the course of twelve days. I think this is due primarily to the launch of the new Wiggio iPhone app and the news that Wiggio just recently hit 700,000 users. On sites such as Twitter, I noticed countless Tweets and “Re-Tweets” about this exciting new venture.

Sentiment

More good news here in that the positive sentiment outnumbers the negative.

Also, I liked that I found a ton of neutral comments about Wiggio on Addictomatic. This shows that people are buzzin’ about Wiggio. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, word-of-mouth marketing is invaluable. I’m sure the aforementioned news of their 700,000+ user base and their iPhone app are responsible for all these chatter.

Findings – Twitter

I found that a majority of tweets were positive and involved telling people their great experiences. Occasionally I’d find some negative comments as well as some comments asking questions about the site. Below I’ve chosen a few examples of each from each Twitter “snapshot” I collected.

Positive Examples:

· March 1

o Pritaylor: @kjarrett I’m currently using Wiggio for a project and it’s an amazing tool. It’s fast, organized and user friendly!

1 day ago via Netvibes official widget · Reply · View Tweet

· March 8

o ShellTerrell: Still believe Wiggio is one of the best platforms for online collaboration & its free! http://wiggio.com #edtech #elearning

1 day ago via Tweetdeck · Reply · View Tweet

· March 13

o Profjep: RT @ktenkely: Loving Wiggio’s new look! Much cleaner!

            3 days ago via Twitter for Mac · Reply · View Tweet

· March 21

o Sdt_kappagamma: Lots going on this upcoming month of April! Everyone remember to check the wiggio account for dates!

                         1 day ago via Twitter for Android· Reply · View Tweet

·  March 28

o Thomas_A_Kelley: Impressed that #wiggio sent me a follow-up email offering resources about their service…I might really need to try this thing out!

                         20 minutes ago via web· Reply · View Tweet

People are lovin’ Wiggio! I mean, c’mon, can ya blame ‘em?!

I found a majority of people had great things to say about Wiggio. More specifically, mentioning the simplicity, the fact that it’s free, and the new “look” Wiggio has upgraded too all seem to be hot topics in the world of social media.

I think it’s also important to note that there are different types of positivity surrounding the tweets about Wiggio. I’ve come across comments, such as the one on March 21, that suggest the user has had a good experience with Wiggio in that she’s continuing to rely on the service. Also, there are those who are more straight forward with their positive comments, as seen on March 28, where the user expresses direct happiness with the service.

To be honest, I’m not very present in the Twitter-world. I really don’t have much experience with Twitter and I have yet to be really sold on the idea. In compiling these tweets throughout the semester, however, I’m noticing that positive tweets can be extremely supportive for organizations. I would suggest that Wiggio consider integrating some of these tweets on their page for other viewers to see. I think this would be an extremely effective way to encourage membership in that there would be heightened word-of-mouth marketing. I’m thinking a “Tweet-deck” of sorts could appear on Wiggio’s main site that would scroll through up-to-date positive tweets. As of right now, Wiggio does utilize positive testimonials from current users, however I think the reliability of a real tweet would be more effective.

But…unfortunately we don’t live in a world of sunshine and rainbows. There were definitely people who weren’t so tickled by Wiggio’s awesomeness. Below are some examples of the negative comments I found…

Negative Examples:

· March 1

o Marino_J: @PublicUniverse None of my teachers have used Wiggio for classes but I have used it – the calendar is not particularly impressive.

About 16 hours ago via web · Reply · View Tweet

· March 8

o Stephen_shaffer: @wiggio is wiggio down right now? Doesn’t seem to be loading for me…

2 days ago via web · Reply · View Tweet

· March 13

o Subimage: Oh cool…someone signed my support email address up for a @wiggio email group and now I can’t unsubscribe from it. Piece of sh*t…

2 days ago via Twitter for Mac · Reply · View Tweet 

·         March 21

o Mint_blah: I can’t access to wiggio…..

                        2 day ago via web· Reply · View Tweet

·         March 28

o Rumors about naked race running rampant: The even, advertised on Facebook as “BANNED: Wiggio.com Nearly Naked G…http://bit.ly/fLc3K6

                         8 hours ago via twitterfeed· Reply · View Tweet

Ya’know…sometimes it’s hard to see people say negative things about something you’re so passionate about. But, there is some positive that can come out of these comments. As an organization, Wiggio can surely utilize these comments in hopes that they might be able to improve on features that users are finding unsatisfactory. While it may be initially unsettling to have something negative being said about you, it’s great that Wiggio can look at these comments to really understand what their users want and thus be able to improve upon their services based on actual consumer demand.

In trying to think of a way to help alleviate the negativity surrounding Wiggio through tweets like the ones seen above, I would suggest that Wiggio consider creating a plan to reach out to those who are unsatisfied with their experience. In doing so, it really shows compassion for the users. I know that currently Wiggio does a lot in terms of responding to feedback, however, it would be great if Wiggio utilized Twitter to tweet back to the negative comment so that others, too, could see that Wiggio is dedicated to bettering the experience. Similarly, the original tweet-er would feel as though they are being heard which could tackle the problem at the source and avoid any bad potential word-of-mouth marketing.

Now, I should note that negative feedback is rather infrequent, so the time dedicated to this task would be rather minimal. It could become the duty of the Wiggio employee responsible for the current feedback responses to respond to a certain amount of negative comments per week.

Similarly, Wiggio can look at comments made by those who are looking for support. Here are a few examples of those comments…

Support Examples:

· March 1

o KrisKopack: @wiggio When exactly will the app for Wiggio be released?? Please let me know ASAP. Thanks.

2 days ago via Twitter for iPhone · Reply · View Tweet

· March 8

o Jakubiec: Are any creative using #Wiggio to share projects for reviews? What are you likes/dislikes of it.

About 23 hours ago via web · Reply · View Tweet

· March 13

o Wiggio: Wiggio iPhone app is live! Let us know what you think

            1 day ago via web · Reply · View Tweet

· March 21

o Willistj: anyone out there in #sachat using @Wiggio?
     1 day ago via web · Reply · View Tweet

· March 28

o MatthewPyles: WIGGIO ISN’T WORKING #imgoingtofailcalculus

                    1 day ago via txt· Reply · View Tweet

If you remember the chapter in Groundswell entitled “Helping the groundswell support itself,” they talked about Dell’s use of a support. More specifically, they outlined how successful Dell was in their creation of having their customers support themselves. As opposed to having employees whose job it was to field countless customer support questions every day, they created a support site that would allow questions to be answered thoroughly once and then accessed by thousands of others who may have the same question.

This is an idea that I found to be relevant in relation to Wiggio. It’s something that I undoubtedly will be suggesting. How awesome would it be for them to have a “Blog” aspect of their site where users could interact with one another and share these tips, tricks and questions? This would surely help to alleviate Wiggio of having to address every user individually.

In thinking about how to propose this idea to Wiggio, I realized that the creation of an open message board may be quite the task. It would undoubtedly have to be monitored and that, in and of itself, is an enormous undertaking. Perhaps it would work best if Wiggio created a space where they could post an expanded “Frequently Asked Questions” forum. Here, they could address many of the support type questions for users to access. It may also be helpful if users had the ability to “Chat Live” with a Wiggio representative. This would surely show, even more so, Wiggio’s dedication to the user.

The final tool that I used to analyze Wiggio was Google Insights. I loved this applications ability to give me a visual of search saturation over a period of time.

Findings – Google Insights

The first search that I ran was for the key term “Wiggio” on dates ranging from 2008 to present. Here’s what I found…

Here, you can see that people started searching for “Wiggio” beginning in April of 2008. This coincides nicely with their official launch which happened in September of 2008. Over the three year span, I also noticed that the search saturation spiked during the academic school year – especially in the fall when school resumed. This is surely due to Wiggio’s undeniable value to students. Interestingly enough, searches were lowest on the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I wonder if other companies found decreases around this time as well. I’d be interested to compare this trend with Wiggio’s competitors and with other searches to discover what the “hot” search items were during this low point for Wiggio. (I’d have to imagine they revolved around online shopping!!)

The second graph that I looked at was just focused on 2011. The graph below shows January 2011 to present.

The reason I wanted to look at this graph was because I wanted to match it up with my previous findings on other social media monitoring sites. What I found was that the numbers tend to bounce from day to day. There were no drastic dips or spikes, but it can be argued that Wiggio’s recent launch of the iPhone app and their reaching 700,000 users has attributed to the recent spikes. I look forward to seeing how this graph looks in a few weeks once the excitement has a chance to pan out.

Over all, I was able to discover that there is a huge audience of people who are sharing news about Wiggio through the web. A lot of SocialMention  and Google Insight results were in reference to news articles about Wiggio. Because of this, my suggestion would be to amp up the “In the Press” section that is currently on Wiggio’s main site. Right now, they have a little note in the corner that has a couple notable news stories, but they never change and aren’t really highlighted. I’m thinking – Wiggio should create a blog, of sorts, where they have post all of these news articles for those who come to Wiggio.com to browse. I think it would show just how popular Wiggio has become!

Conclusions

I know…I know…this was a LOT of information to take in. So, let me bundle this in a neat little package for you:

1)      Social Mention

o Strength, Passion & Reach

§  Steady numbers.

§  Any increase likely due to having reached 700k users, iPhone app & the “Nearly Naked Run.”

o Sentiment

§  Overwhelmingly neutral.

§  Positive far outnumber the negatives.

2)      Twitter

o Positive, Negative, Support

§  Most posts are positive or neutral.

§  Lots of “re-tweets” for hot Wiggio news.

3)      Google Insight

o Graph of 2008 – 2011

§  Searches began in April of 2008, just before their live launch in September.

§  Spikes during academic year, especially fall.

§  Lowest dips around Christmas time.

o Graph of 2011

§  Spikes likely due to their being in the news for users, iPhone app and “Nearly Naked Run.”

·         Suggestions for Wiggio (Based on Findings):

o “LIVE” tweets on wiggio.com in place of the current testimonials.

o  “Dell-like” support forum/blog/FAQ page

o Live Chat option for support.

o Creating a more in depth news forum to replace the “In the Press” links on the homepage.

Again, I invite you to go check out Wiggio. As you can tell, I love it and it’ll make your life MUCH easier – I promise! I’d really love to hear what you think of it. Sign up, for free, and poke around on the site…it won’t disappoint!

Choose the Cheese! (Original #3)

Grocery shopping.

To some people, this is the most unimaginably brutal “chore” that they could imagine. Making a list, driving to the crowded store, filling up a cart, unloading a cart to, often times, be met with the most unpleasant cashier EVER, loading the car, unloading the car, practically breaking your arms by trying to carry every single bag in at once, then, the daunting task of unpacking all of the aforementioned groceries.

Having said this, it should come as no surprise that I go grocery shopping as often as humanly possible - multiple times a week in many cases. Whether it be Trader Joe’s (great customer service), Stop&Shop, Shaw’s, Whole Foods…I don’t discriminate. I even sometimes find myself going to the grocery store when I don’t even need anything! I go to buy things for my boyfriend, taking his money (with his permission of course!) and getting his groceries. So, with the amount of time that I spend in the grocery stores, I’ve started to pay attention to the marketing and advertising strategies of the companies out there. On a recent trip to the store, I found something that caught my eye. It’s a product I’m sure many of you are familiar with:

All hail the almighty Cheez-It!

Yum!

On this particular day, I was cruising around with my rattle-y shopping cart when I stumbled upon a cardboard display case for these delicious cheesy treats. But to my surprise, it wasn’t for the original cheddar flavor, or even any of the other delicious flavors they have made…it was a SAMPLER BOX with NEW flavors!

I was immediately struck by the fact that they were coming up with some great flavors: Asiago, Colby or Romano. Then, I was even more impressed with the fact that they were asking ME!...silly old ME to help them decide on their newest flavor. Oh, I felt so special! They had me hooked.

Upon digging a little deeper into this wonderful marketing ploy, I discovered that there’s already a huge online following of this “Choose the Cheese” campaign. They’ve got a flourishing Facebook page where consumers can cast their vote for their favorite variety.

So what is Cheez-It’s objective here? Well, for starters they want to make their consumers feel valued. CHECK. I personally felt like my opinion mattered. This increases my loyalty towards these enchanting crackers. They’re also making moves to ensure the success of their new product. They could have just as easily released a new flavor, without any indication of its potential success, and taken a gamble in today’s market. However, Cheez-It recognized that their industry was truly bombarded with zillions of “cheesy-cracker-like” options. What could they do to ensure their success? ASK. Ask us! What do we want!? Make us feel special and then deliver what we ask for! They’ll then be supplying a demand that they made us want! Sneaky, sneaky Cheez-It…I’m on to you.

Does this story sound familiar to you? That’s probably because Groundswell has a whole chapter pertaining to “embracing the groundswell.” More specifically, they gave the example of a man named George and his beloved dog Pooch.

In this example, Del Monte Foods wanted to create a line of dog foods. Since they obviously wanted to launch a successful product, they assigned Gala Amoroso, senior consumer insights manager, to figure out what the consumers wanted in their dog foods. To do so, she utilized MarketTools, an online community vendor/moderator. They created “a private community called I love my dog - Dogs are people, too,"(p.180) to open up the lines of communication with their target audience. Through MarketTools, Del Monte Foods was able to reach people like George and ask them questions such as, “Imagine that your dog could write out his or her fantasy of what to eat for one day. What would that look like?” (p.180). In doing this, Del Monte is essentially making dog lovers, like George, fall in love with them. George’s loyalty likely increased to Del Monte because he felt as though they truly understood his love for Pooch and he began to feel as though they really cared about what Pooch would want to eat if he could talk. On the other end, Del Monte is getting the valuable information they need to create a product that won’t flop once it hits the shelf. They’ll already have created a demand for a product they have yet to even create.

Genius.

I just loved Groundswell’s example of George and Pooch tied so harmoniously with what’s actually out there. Organizations, like Del Monte and Cheez-It are doing excellent things in their marketing departments by embracing the groundswell. Ask us what we want and then deliver…I assure you, we’ll buy.

Heck, I know I can’t wait for Cheez-It to release their new product. I’m so interested to see how this project will pan out for them. I wish more organizations would do this – give us a chance to sample a few options and allow us to choose. Can you think of a product you wish would allow you to sample before they released it? Foods, drink, or even something like clothing, cars...anything. I’d be interested to hear what you think!

Do U Wiggio? (Reading Reflection #2)

Do U Wiggio?

Let me ask you this...how many times have you been in a group, let’s say a group for a class project, and you’ve had to wrestle with your group members to communicate, to find a time and place to meet, to share your drafts for a paper, or anything of the sort? If you’re human, you’ve surely experienced these annoyances.

What if there was an online platform that you could use to make it easier to work in groups…a platform whose primary goal is to relieve you of these hassles. Well, such a platform exists! Exciting, right?! What this information video (below) and learn the basics of what Wiggio has to offer.

Umm…how cool is that!? Now, before I dig into the Groundswell readings and what I took from the most recent chunk of readings, let me give you some background on my relation to Wiggio and how it’s transformed my life

In a last stitch effort to find an internship for the summer of 2009, the summer between my junior and senior year of undergrad, I searched the Facebook Marketplace for internships in public relations. An ad for a PR internship with Wiggio appeared close to the top of the search results. It sounded pretty cool but I was understandably skeptical about the reliability of an ad on Facebook. I went ahead and watched the introductory e-mail (the same one inserted above) and got pretty excited about the opportunity. After a few phone interviews, I was offered the position.

On my first day, I didn’t know what to think. The start-up was based out of a three story home in the residential streets of Cambridge, MA. It was the epitome of a start-up. The founder, Dana Lampert, kept me intrigued.

Dana, the founder and CEO of Wiggio, was 24 at the time. Having generated the concept of Wiggio in a business class he’d taken at Cornell, Dana ran with his idea, received financial support, and began to make this dream and reality. If you ever get a change to meet him, you’ll come to realize that his passion for the company is through the roof. For those summer months, Dana and our small team of interns, did nothing but eat, breath and dream all things Wiggio. Our success was undeniable in that the number of users increased dramatically. As of my last update, in September 2010, Wiggio had just surpassed the half-a-million user mark!

So, now that you know a little bit about my history with the company, let me share some of the things Wiggio does to stay afloat in the groundswell. As you know, hopefully J, the most recent readings we’ve done deal with energizing the groundswell, helping the swell support itself, embracing the groundswell, and learning how a connection to the groundswell could transform a company. Initially, I had a hard time connecting these ideas to an idea, or a company, but I eventually got it! It was actually through my social monitoring project that it came to me. I was doing some research on Wiggio on Addictomatic when I came across users who had posted their love for Wiggio on sites such as Twitter. It was then that I remembered a very important aspect of Wiggio’s culture.

At Wiggio, customer feedback is taken very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that there’s actually an employee whose main focus is monitoring the sites “feedback” mailbox. The submissions include praises, annoyances, technical questions, reports of bugs, and suggestions for improvements. In an effort to create a supportive environment for its users, Wiggio representatives take the time to read, and respond when appropriate, to each and every entry. What’s missing, however, is an open forum for these entries in an effort to resolve issues or questions so they wouldn’t have to answer the same question more than once.

Take the example found in chapter eight of the Groundswell text. In hopes of eliminating the cost of conventional customer service, Dell utilized a support forum to help members support themselves. The support forum works as follows: 1) customer had a question, 2) Dell representative took the time to adequately explain the solution, 3) customer was happy, 4) Over 600 others benefited from this particular entry, and 5) Dell saved a bundle and enabled the groundswell to help themselves. (p.160).

The way that Wiggio currently operates, they don’t offer an opportunity for the groundswell to be self-reliant. I think Dell’s efforts in this regard are excellent and I look forward to my next meeting with the Wiggio team to pose this idea in hopes of helping their business excel in even more areas!

Beyond the creation of support forums, there are other avenues that could be explored to increase groundswell satisfaction. In the tenth chapter, “Embracing the Groundswell,” a case study examined a practice used by SalesForce.com. In their attempt to better understand what their customers needed, they joined forced with the concepts behind “Crispy News” – a program that allows “visitors to vote entries up and down based on what they like.” (p.184). Salesforce.com aimed to hear what their customers wanted. To do so, they launched an Idea-Exchange. Here, customers voice their opinions on the organization and are able to vote on ideas they like or dislike. Thus, the employees at Salesforce.com know what’s most important to their customers – it’s an easy way to create a “corporate to-do list” that’ll undeniably keep the groundswell happy.

What. A. Fantastic. Idea! In a start-up company like Wiggio, customer feedback and ideas are cherished and, often times, implemented. During my internship, I was an integral part of testing the “demo-site” before new changes were synced to our “live-site.” I also played a part in creating ideas on how to make the site more efficient for users. By creating an “Idea-Exchange” forum like the one used by Salesforce.com, Wiggio could get some fantastic ideas from the aficionados and they’d also know how popular/supported an idea was based on the number of votes it’d received. This is urely another concept I’ll be taking to my friends at Wiggio.

So many ideas came out of our most recent chunk of reading. It’s cool to see how these innovative ideas can be applied to a wide variety of organizations and circumstances.  

So let me leave you with this… USE WIGGIO.

Seriously.

Your life WILL be much less stressful and the recently remodeled Wiggio site is so easy to use! And…it’s FREE! Who doesn’t love free stuff?! J

Sign up today on Wiggio’s site. Poke around and let me know what you think about the service. Praises, comments, concerns…let me know and I’ll make sure to send them on to the founder!

Look forward to hearing from you,

Liz

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday (Original #2)

"Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday"

I don’t know about you guys, but I love the restaurant Ruby Tuesdays. I, honestly, could eat there every day…in fact, there have been weeks that I’ve gone there more than I’ve eaten at home. Just ask my poor boyfriend, whenever we think about going out to dinners, it’s almost an unspoken assumption that I want to go to Ruby’s…or, “Rubes” as I affectionately call it.

Okay, okay, I know what you’re probably thinking – it’s just a typical chain restaurant with arguably mediocre food, but they’ve got one thing that really gets me going – a salad bar. I’m somewhat of a vegetarian and I couldn’t love vegetables more…so, the idea of a vegetable free-for-all for the low price of $8 couldn’t be more appealing to me.

I mean, come on…how good does that look!?

So how does this have any ties to social media? Well, Ruby Tuesday’s has hopped on the social media bandwagon. They’ve come to realize that they can reach their customers on the Internet and they’re utilizing that as a tool to propel their business. For starters, the restaurant has what’s called “So Connected.” Basically, you can sign up for free on their website to be a part of this “club” and in doing so, you receive many promotional coupons that will entice the customer to come in. For example, they have a “Buy One Get One Free Entrée” coupon that they send out frequently. How awesome is that?! I don’t know about you, but I’m a broke graduate student who can really benefit from free stuff! They even give out free burgers on your birthday. Sometimes, they’ll send out e-mails asking you to “Like” them on Facebook and in return you’ll receive a coupon for a free appetizer. I think they’ve done an excellent job tapping into their audience through the Internet. It’s costing them very little to provide these offers and in return, they’re getting a band of loyal followers. Think about it – their plan is in action right now! Here I am blogging away about the awesome-ness of Ruby Tuesdays! I bet some of you will even go on to their website and sign up for “So Connected” so that you can start reaping the benefits!

Here, I’ll even make it easier for ya – click here: http://pages.rubytuesdayrestaurants.com/page.aspx?QS=330c754b5e92df74c5001a21711e171204a64d8b8f9cfa5519d03d3ba221e1a1 – they won’t bombard you with unnecessary e-mails, I promise!

Again, I think their efforts to join the groundswell have really paid off. They realized that the media forums are ever changing and they’re taking steps to incorporate these changes into their marketing plans. To me, it speaks to their commitment to the customer. Pair that with their incredible salad bar, and I’m sold!

For those of you who local to the Worcester area, check out the nearest Ruby Tuesday’s located in the Lincoln Plaza over by Target, Dick’s, Stop & Shop…they’ve got a great staff there – I would know, I practically live there! J

Despite what the chorus of this classic Rolling Stones song says, “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday…” the real Ruby Tuesday’s is experiencing anything but goodbye’s from their customers.

"True Grit" (Reading #1)

True Grit & The Groundswell

"The wicked flee when none pursueth."

            You know, I had a rather difficult time thinking about what to write for this first reading reflection. In all of the reading we have done so far in Groundswell, I’ve found there to be just SO much information – so many examples. It took a while for me to figure out where to take this assignment. It actually wasn’t until I went out and saw the new movie True Grit that I found my inspiration.

            For those of you who may not be familiar, True Grit is a movie that’s in theaters right now. It’s a remake of a 1969 classic and stars actors Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon (!!!). The story follows a 14-year old girl in her attempt to have her father’s killer hung. It’s a long and strategic journey in a sort of old Western-y type of film. At first glance, I thought I’d hate the movie – it’s not really my type. But, I knew it had received a number of nominations and I didn’t think my boyfriend would want to see another “girly” movie, so I caved. It’s actually a fantastic film – I highly recommend it. ANYWAYS, back to my point…in the opening shot of the film presents an old proverb from the Old Testament. It reads, “The wicked flee when none pursueth.” I really liked this quote as I feel like it applies to so many situations in life. Think about it – let’s say you have a bully who likes to get a rise out of his victims. This “rise” will fuel the bully’s fire, however, if the victim doesn’t let it bother him and goes on as if the bully’s actions have no impact, the bully will likely lose interest. Right? It’s an idea that can be applied to many different circumstances, even in the PR/marketing world.

            Now how does this seemingly irrelevant example relate to the Groundswell readings we’ve done so far? Well, I was thinking about the examples provided in Chapter One – the examples that included the photo of Barbara Streisand’s house, the Comcast employee who fell asleep on the job, the digg.com posting of the “forbidden key” code, and others. In all of these instances, the Internet community got ahold of some potentially compromising information and spread it online. What is an organization, or individual, to do when presented with this type of obstacle? The text concludes that, “this movement can’t be tamed. It comes from thousands of sources and washes over traditional business like a flood…it can’t be stopped at any one place. Often it can’t be stopped at all.” (Groundswell 9). With that knowledge under our belt, the job of the organization then becomes a matter of learning to understand and prevail in an ever changing community where information is limitlessly provided and received.

            Think back to the proverb: “The wicked flee when none pursueth.” When an individual, or organization, is faced with negativity that may be circulating on the Internet, it is often best not to pursue each and every quibble that they come across. Once people realize that the efforts to tame the comments out there, they can begin to think of innovative ways to offset them. Remembering all the while that the “rise” that they could potentially evoke in their audience by trying to combat their negative comments could only make them lash out even further.

            Final words of advice: (1) Learn to let it go. Unless it’s an enormous PR crisis, come to terms with the fact that people are going to speak either mind – let ‘em do it. The more you let your audience know you’re “freaking out”…the more they’ll provoke you. (2) Go see True Grit…it’s great!