Tuesday

The Six Groups of Social Media Behaviour

The book Groundswell by Bernoff and Li has been mentioned by Ty a couple of times on the blog. If you have read the book you will recognize this image:

Essentially it breaks consumers into six groups based on how they participate online. Well how does our population of consumers rank?

A lot of people are questioning the methodology of Forrester's data collection on this one, and I agree. There are previous studies showing that as many as 89% of Canadians have watched an online video in the last 12 months, completely throwing this 43% spectators percentage out the window.

Regardless I like the idea behing the ladder. It is a great way to filter your social media ideas. Who are your customers? Where on the ladder are they? Now make sure that your ideas, apps, tools, sites...whatever the hell you build makes sense. Don't expect them to create a video when all they do is watch them.

Charts found through Brad Mays twitter feed. See the full tweet here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really like the ladder chart, but I cannot stop questioning their basic segmentation rules and the ambiguity of the activities.

"consumers participating in at least one of the indicated activities at least monthly"

In fact, I think because of that, it increases the number of "Creators" and "Critics" groups. I feel the Creators group will have a lot less people if we adjust the basic rules.

I also think there should be another group as "Distributors". E.g. someone like Collectors but re-distrubute to multiple channels. They don't create their original content. They are highly active collectors who like posting most popular contents to other channels and feel satisfied when they get high views.

And I think the Collectors and Distributors are a lot more than Creators..

Hehehe.. Just my opinion.. :)

Unknown said...

That's a really interesting point.

The Forrester segmentation is a great tool for a client to get their head around the fact that not all online consumers are the same. It's a good first step to developing digital personas but it could be improved.

Love the thought that there should be a distributors group - people who don't create but pass on anything they find to everyone they know. (ie. The rabid "diggers" who are always looking for new pieces of content to submit).

The one issue I have with the model is the thought that if I'm a creator, I'm not a collector, passive viewer, etc. I think Forrester will have to work hard to show how different segments bridge multiple points on the ladder and how a clients campaign could play to that (ie. A creator is more likely to post content and distribute on their own...)

Thanks for your thoughts!