Georg Cockburn

In their forthcoming book “Groundswell. Winning in a world transformed by social technologies.” Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff, two of Forrester Research’s top analysts show how to use the new ways customers are connecting with each other for marketing purposes. They write about a social phenomenon - the groundswell - which transforms the way information flows and people link themselves.

To promote the new book and create some buzz, Forrester Research set up a website including not only info on the book and the authors, a blog by the authors and a discussion section, but also created an online tool to build your customers’ “social technographics profile”. The interesting part about that is that a regular, printed book is enhanced by an online tool, that lets me utilize the knowledge of the book directly for my purposes. There’s no better way of explaining new concepts than directly delivering the proof of concept.

In this way a publication and an online tool match perfectly. - Besides creating some useful marketing buzz.