Segmenting your social media audiences

Are you a Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner or Spectator?

If you've not seen Forrester Technographics tool before you are missing a treat. Showcased in the book Groundswell, Technographics is Forrester Research's methodology for surveying customers. Its similar to segmenting by demographics or psychographics but segments based on degree of engagement with social media - so it's a behavioural segmentation for social media and related technology.

Many reading will know this, but I thought it was worth flagging-up for those who don't, it's new to many in my classes. The tool can be really useful for setting realistic expectations of what social media can deliver amongst your non-marketing colleagues also  since it shows how degree of engagement with social media and blogs varies.

Forrester divide people's online behaviour into six categories. You can see these below.

Its important for organisations to know which categories most of its customers fall into as the communications media they select should appeal to the widest group possible. So, for instance, if most of your target market simply spectated online, you would be unwise to invest heavily into a forum or blog that was dependent on user generated content.

I've pulled together Forrester profiles of the main mail customer groups (UK and US adults age 25-54) for my company, Musicademy below. Its interesting to note the differences in behaviour in the ages and countries.

My next job is to encourage our customers to spectate less and be more of a critic (i.e. post some comments), a collector (tweet about our stuff, sign up for our newsletter) or a joiner (liking our Facebook page).

If you are interested and want to look up online behaviours for other countries or ages, you can click through to play with the Forrester Technographics tool. For students studying digital marketing with CIM/CAM, The IDM or Econsultancy, and completing audits for their marketing plans, Technographics is a great tool in helping you to understand more about your customers and their online behaviour.

Do let us know how you find this tool if you have used it or other approaches you have used to segment your social media audience.