I attended a free webinar last week on the new book, Groundswell: Winning in World Transformed by Technologies, presented by its authors, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester Research.

The book is geared toward the for-profit sector, but the strategies can be adopted by nonprofits in terms of building community, engaging activists, and even raising financial support around a cause or organization online.

Groundswell: What is it?

Bernoff and Li apply the word to describe the "social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations."

This can be very scary for corporations, of course, which is why they wrote the book: to provide businesses with strategies for harnessing the power of social media for their desired purposes. Indeed, the first hurdle for corporations or organizations (or individuals, for that matter) working with social media is getting over the fear of the crowd and learning how to harness the power of community.

It seems this should be a natural fit for the non-profit sector -- and there have been studies suggesting that we are the early-adopters, for once.

What can it do?

The authors began their session by giving examples of some of the victims of Groundswell: Dell's exploding laptops and Comcast's sleeping-cable-guy are two memorable failures.

But the authors point out that businesses can harness online tools for their own research, marketing, sales, support, and product development purposes. Nonprofit organizations should substitute "sales" with donations and "product development" with program development.

How can YOU do that?

The authors have come up with a handy-dandy way for you to remember the strategy: P.O.S.T.

P is for People. Start with your target audience (or constituency): define who they are and what they need. They even offer an online tool to help you profile your "customers" (though we can call them constituents, of course).

O is for Objective(s). Define your goals. This is KEY: do not move forward with social media from an organizational perspective unless and until you have clearly defined what you want to accomplish. And come up with a standard for measuring success. The authors offer some guidelines by laying out the major things you can do with social media and how they translate to your business (organizational) goals:

S is for Strategy. What is going to happen when you accomplish your goal? This is an interesting and important component of the advice offered in Groundswell. The authors want you to "plan for how relationships with [constituents] will change" as a result of your social media strategy. Think about accomplishing the goals you set in the step above and how you will incorporate the new relationships into your organizational plan.

T is for Technology. Yes, choosing the tools comes last. Now that you've analyzed your audience, set your goals and terms of success, and planned out how social media will play a part in your overall organizational plan, you're ready to search for the right technology to put it into use. It could be a blog, a social network, or maybe even a specific campaign using YouTube to share videos or Twitter to connect and engage people around an event.

Takeaways from the Q&A:

During the Q&A, attendees asked questions related to their own business goals, but there were at least 3 points that apply to any organization:

Staffing: When planning for the management of a social media strategy/campaign, consider two different roles that must be filled: the manager/moderator of the community and the internal advocate/contributor for the community. Be sure to find someone relevant to the needs/interests of the community.

Sensitive Information: This was asked in the context of regulated industries such as financial investments and pharmaceuticals, but I think it could apply to any organization concerned with boundaries, privacy, or the other legal issues surround sharing information online. The authors' advice is to get your organization's legal or regulation team on board with your plan on the ground floor. Get them to provide you with clear boundaries and guidelines you can follow when setting up your strategy, tools, and then when managing your community. Also, make these rules/guidelines very clear for your own organizational use and for the community.

Life Cycle: The authors pointed out that the marketing mentality of a "campaign" doesn't really apply to engaging social communities online. Plan for long-term relationships and be ready for evolution and adaptation.

Bernoff and Li were generous enough to offer answers to all the questions that came up in the session on their blog.