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How to find out how your audience uses social media

By Social Small Biz on January 27, 2010

Not everyone uses social media in the same way. This is fairly obvious, but analyst firm Forrester has, for a few years, been publishing some very detailed research that really helps our understanding.

Forrester’s Social Technographics are based on detailed research that asks how different demographics (e.g. age, sex, location) use social media.

This information can then be used by businesses and marketers to help put together strategies that will target specific audiences.

Last week, Forrester released a revised version of their Social Technographics introducing a new profile – conversationalists.

You can see the list on the right arranged as rungs on a ladder, but we’ve picked out below the key profiles and the behaviours associated with them:

  1. Creators
    • Publish a blog
    • Publish your own Web pages
    • Upload video you created
    • Upload audio/video music you created
    • Write articles or stories and post them
  2. Conversationalists
    • Update status on a social networking site
    • Post updates on Twitter
  3. Critics
    • Post ratings/reviews of products/services
    • Comment on someone else’s blog
    • Contribute to online forums
    • Contribute to/edit a wiki
  4. Collectors
    • Use RSS feeds
    • Vote for Web sites online
    • Add ‘tags’ to photos or Web pages
  5. Joiners
    • Maintain profile on a social network site
    • Visit social networking sites
  6. Spectators
    • Read blogs
    • Listen to podcasts
    • Watch video from other users
    • Read online forums
    • Read customer ratings/reviews
    • Read tweets
  7. Inactives
    • None of the above

Where do you think you sit? Where are your customers? You are likely to fit into several different profiles – you don’t have to be one or another.

So how can this be used by small businesses? Well, Forrester has a great little tool that allows you to create your own Technographic based on your audience’s demographic. The information will then tell you where the majority of your audience sits in terms of the above profiles. This will then help you to make sure that your social media strategy reflects your audience’s trends.

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