Chapter 3 – The Social Technographics Profile

Chapter Three of Groundswell introduces us to the 7 technographics – that is technological demographics that use social media. Knowing the tendencies of these groups can help to focus a groundswell campaign to match the characteristics of each group in order to make the most benefit. Social media users are broken down into groups; Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives (Groundswell, 2011, p. 43-45). By knowing the typical profile of each of these technographics and what types of activities they’re likely to participate in can give the campaign the focus it needs to get off the ground. Li and Bernoff show us in Figure 3-1 (p. 42) that U.S. adults are more likely to visit a social networking site or watch an uploaded video than they are to start a wiki. Globally, these results will vary, the country of origin will influence the prevalence of each type of technographic. For example, North Americans are more inclined to be Joiners and Spectators, whereas in South Korea are more likely to be Creators (pp. 43-44).

What this means to those hoping to start a groundswell is that each issue needs to be studied specific to each geographical area and demographic. In doing so, a social technographic profile of the user target market can be used to develop the strategy.

For example, WIN House target market is adult women in Edmonton and surrounding areas. The Forrester website, Empowered, narrows down the technographics by selecting details about age, country of origin, and gender. From there, they are able to predict the type of social media users in this group. I have attached two charts, one for Canadian women aged 35-44 and the other one for Canadian women 25-34. Although the numbers for each technographic profile varied slightly, it is still overwhelmingly obvious that the target audience is most likely to be a Joiner or Spectator, so expecting women in this group to start a groundswell blogging campaign is not likely to yield positive results. Women in these age groups are somewhat comfortable being Critics though, so engaging them in an activity where they can add their views to someone else’s work (like a wiki or a blog) would likely be more appealing.

Women in spousal abuse situations are more than likely to have suffered mental abuse, destroying their self-esteem. This type of person is less likely to draw attention themselves by creating a blog or wiki, but as predicted by the technographics, she would be most interested in reading others’ content, watching related materials on YouTube, and perhaps anonymously posting a comment.

Only by understanding the specific issue, how it relates to our target market, and in which geographical area we are working in, can we predict the type of behaviour and adjust our tactics and strategy to engage the widest audience. Chapter Three of Groundswell demonstrates the differences between social media users and gives us the tools to identify which tactic will yield the desired results.

 

Reference:

Li, C., & Bernoff, J., (2011). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press

Images:

Technographic profile of young, Canadian, adult women. Retrieved from http://empowered.forrester.com/tool_consumer.html