Groundswell Award: Listening

Forrester's 2008 Groundswell award submissions provide a number of very interesting ideas and best practices. While the criteria for the various categories are a little unclear, the categories themselves are quite appropriate given the topic. As an example, "listening" category seems to look for companies who listen to their customers about the type of content and of the online communities they actually want to form.

A cool example from this category is Omni Hotels . Instead of just gathering customer information for their own use, Omni uses the information provided by customers to add significant value to their travelling experience. The great thing about this site, is that it doesn't have a very corporate feel which likely encourages customers to contribtue to the conversation on a more frequent basis. The site relies heavily on community contribution to provide it's content so this also encourages participation. Overall, there are a lot of interesting lessons to be learned from The Local Scoop!