Technographics. Forrester’s Ladder just got a new Rung.

Januar 19th, 2010 • Reports, Social, Social Business, Strategy

In 2007 Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff introduced the world to the Groundswell model. It has become something like a standard (if there is one) in Social strategies, summarizing data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies. One key aspect of it was the Social Technographics Ladder that profiled users from all over the world according to their level of tech-savvyness in the social realm (plus, they offer a handy online tool too).

No doubt, the Technographics Ladder was a great first model to profile overlapping customer groups and their ability to move in the social space. And – what I liked most about it – Forrester fed it with up-to-date data to turn it into a valuable model for marketers. Nevertheless there were too few rungs on the ladder. We understood that there are Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Critics and Creators…but something was missing.

Forrester has now updated its Technographics Ladder and added another rung to it – the Conversationalist.

As you can see from the graphic, we added a new rung, “Conversationalists”. Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn’t much of a conversation.

Conversationalists intrigue me. They’re 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.

So, here we go. Please welcome the New Kid on the Ladder. And if you have no clue what I am talking about, get your copy of Groundswell asap.

Update: I found this great visualization by Mike Arauz describing the shift in levels of participation 2007 – 2009 based on Forrester’s data. It confirms the obvious… (via Griffin Farley)

Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Conversationalist, Diagram, Forrester, Groundswell, Model, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Technographics, Tool, Tools, Twitter

Trackback URI.