Groundswell Mondays for Social Media Strategists: Web Activeness Levels
Josh Bernoff at Forrester Research promised an exciting new Monday session series for marketers: data of Groundswell shared for free.
In the first data chart, they will have a look at the Social Technographics Profile of small business owners. (This is from the case study for Constant Contact, from Groundswell Chapter 7). If you ask what the hell social technographics may mean, it is a lot more simple than the coined words: how active your consumers are, how they behave socially on the web (country, age, and gender, etc.). The spectrum goes from producers (e.g. who have a blog) through spectators (no blog, but like to read blogs) to inactive users. Hm, somewhat like sex or cooking. Or whatever.
These are the identified behavioral stages of activity on the internet, according to Forrester (no, not revelatory, but rather logical): creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, inactives. Although our web behavior may flexibly change from situation to situation or can be combined in various ways, I have not seen this fact written or emphasized in the Forrester blog. It could further enhance the results.
Pretty neat activeness ladder, huh? Now, let’s play around with the social strategist tool, which you can use for free. (Click on the yellow box to start to build the profile you are interested in).
For instance, I wanted to see the national differences of male activeness in the age group 25-34. I was especially interested in where users are the most active in this market segment (the Creators and the Critics groups). Here are the Groundswell Technosocialgraphblabla results:
- US: 30% creators, and 35% critics.
- UK: 10% creators, and 20% critics
- France: 9% creators, and 19% critics
- Germany: 8% creators, and 25% critics
- Italy: 15% creators, and 21% critics
- Europe: 11% creators, and 22% critics
(unfortunately no available data - yet - for Japan, or for Chinese metros)
As you can see there is a strikingly higher proportion of critics in Europe compared to creators, if the number of Forrester guys are correct. The old continent is lagging behind. The US has almost three times more creators (30%) than western European countries (11%). This cultural division is very very exciting. There must be several factors playing on the activity board of the two web continents. I feel that this difference is very much about a cultural division in risk taking between US contra European individuals and companies, besides internet penetration and prices, marketing savviness, democratic attitudes, and a zillion other factors. What do you think?
By the way, the number of respondents was way higher in Europe (about 25,000) than in the USA (about 10,000).
(research tip via Beet.TV)
ps: I wonder how they are going to calculate with spam blogs, clickfarms, etc. from some Asian and Eastern European countries in the future, if at all.