The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change

Much has been said and written about how companies can use social media to improve customer relations and grow profits.  THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change (October 1, 2010/ Jossey-Bass/$25.95 hardcover), by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, takes a different perspective: How organizations and individuals can harness the power of social media to achieve social change. 

'Most of us have experienced how social technologies are changing the way people relate to each other," the authors write.  "But we are only beginning to understand how these same technologies can fundamentally shift how we engage with and inspire all these networked people and empower them to participate in global movements for change."  THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT shows how social technology can be used to achieve a single, focused, concrete goal--whether it be to inspire others to join your social movement, mobilize political change, or simply satisfy an individual need.  Based on one of the most popular courses at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, it integrates the authors' two distinct disciplines--research and insights on consumer psychology and happiness (what really makes people happy as opposed to what they think makes them happy) and emotional contagion (the infectious spreading of emotion, where happiness seeds subsequent action), combined with the practical applications of marketing strategy in social media, which fuels this infectious action.

THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT/Pg. 2

THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT is named after the only insect that is able to move in any direction—with tremendous speed and force—when its four wings are working in concert.  Similarly, the book incorporates four key "wings," or skills, which the authors express as Focus + GET:

            Focus – identify a single concrete and measureable goal.

            +         

            Grab Attention – catch someone's eye.  Cut through the noise of social

            media with something authentic and memorable.

            Engage – create a personal connection, accessing higher emotions,

            compassion, empathy, happiness.  Engaging is about empowering the

            audience to care enough to want to do something themselves.

            Take Action – enable and empower others to take action.  To make action

            easy, you must prototype, deploy, and continuously tweak tools, templates,

            and programs designed to move audience members from being customers

            to becoming team members—in other words, furthering the cause and the

            change beyond themselves.

THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT introduces these four “dragonfly wings” and explains how to coordinate them to harness social technology in order to spark disproportionate results.  The book features original case studies of such global organizations as the U.S. Navy, Gap, Starbucks, Kiva, Nike, eBay, Twitter and Facebook, as well as start-ups like Groupon, Bonobos, COOKPAD, and more.   There are also examples of how individuals and groups—on their own or on behalf of corporations—have used specific tools to create impact, whether the goal was finding an almost impossible bone marrow match for a friend, launching a unique product, raising millions for cancer research, organizing a protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Columbia, or electing the current president of the United States. 

The information in THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT is supplemented with flowcharts, graphics, and sidebars.  The Dragonfly Toolkit provides social media cheat sheets and boot camps specifically designed for people whose other skills rank ahead of technical proficiency.  Dragonfly Frameworks include new models that will help you implement your goal, and Dragonfly Tips are simple, and sometimes unconventional, ideas inspired by consumer marketing research.  Expert Insights offer the wisdom of leaders in social media, entrepreneurship¸ filmmaking, technology, and more, showing how they have uniquely used social media to achieve spectacular results. 

In addition, Aaker and Smith apply concepts from design thinking, a methodical approach to program and product development that helps creators to get over their unintentional biases and misconceptions in order to create things that are better for the people who will ultimately use them.  They also reveal the secret to cultivating "stickiness," so that your goal is not relegated to Internet oblivion but instead reaches an audience of people who will help propel it forward.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee of a for-profit company, a volunteer at a non-profit, or simply an individual trying to improve someone else's life, THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT is your playbook for using social media to execute your goals efficiently and effectively and propel your cause from awareness to action.  "Ultimately, this book demonstrates that you don't need money or power to cause seismic social change," the authors write.  "With energy, focus, and a good wireless connection, anything is possible."

THE DRAGONFLY EFFECT:

Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change

By Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, with Carlye Adler

Publication Date:  October 1, 2010

Price: $25.95 hardcover

Pages: 256

ISBN: 978-0-470-61415-0