The Social Technographics® Ladder (Forrester, Sept 2010)

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The Latest Global Social Media Trends May Surprise You

Extracted 11MAY2011 from http://blogs.forrester.com/jackie_rousseau_anderson/10-09-28-latest_global_so...

Two and a half years ago, Forrester introduced Social Technographics®, a way to analyze people’s social technology behavior. Today, we want you to take a moment and think about the uptake of social media in your company. Ask yourself the following question:

From the following list of statements, please select where your company stands with social media. (Please choose all that apply)

  1. My company currently has a social media strategy.
  2. My company is thinking about developing a social media strategy.
  3. My company is trying to defend why we don’t have a social media strategy.
  4. My company is currently trying to understand what social media is.
  5. None of the above.

If you answered 1 to 4, then today is your lucky day! We are releasing our newest report: Global Social Technographics . This document reviews two years of global data on how consumers are engaging with social technologies using our Social Technographics classification system globally. The graphic below illustrates this framework in case you’re not familiar with it. As you review the groups, one important thing to note is that only Inactives are an exclusive group. Consumers can (and do) fall into many different groups.

Some of the data will probably confirm your pre-existing suspicions, like the fact that social networking sites (such as Facebook) are driving social media use around the globe. In the US, the “Joiners” group grew 8 percentage points. This was the largest growth of any group in the US. And, overall, this was the lowest growth for Joiners in any of the regions studied.

On the other hand, many groups in the US market plateaued. Creators, the group that is actually adding content to the Internet, are one example of this lack of growth. However, they still account for almost 41 million US online adults. While this lack of new Creators is found around the globe, the tapering off of social media growth in the US (outside of social networks) did not translate globally. In fact, many Asia Pacific countries saw significant growth in most groups.

The story behind the data is pretty clear. The initial wave of consumers using social technologies in the US has halted. Companies will now need to devise strategies to extend social applications past the early adopters. This means that you need to understand how your consumers use social media. Do you know the Social Technographics Profiles of your customers? Is your company preparing for this next phase of social media strategy?