How Do We Approach New Clients with Social Marketing? Part 1

As we dig deeper into the social media realm, we also start to understand how approach to new clients about it

We start with Forrester’s Social Technographic Ladder that classifies people according to how they use social technologies. They are able to quantify the number of online consumers within six groups: 1) Creators, 2) Critics, 3) Collectors, 4) Joiners, 5) Spectators and 6) Inactives. So, truly, this is the first step in developing a Social Media strategy for your business. You say, “what? huh? Let’s look at a description of each according to Forrester:

1. Creators make social content go. They write blogs, publish their own web pages, upload video or music they have created, or write articles and stories and post them.
2. Critics respond to content from others. They post reviews, comment on blogs and microblogs such as Twitter, participate in forums, and edit wiki articles.
3. Collectors organize content for themselves or others using RSS feeds, tags and voting sites such as Digg.com
4. Joiners connect and participate in networks like Facebook and LinkedIn
5. Spectators consume social content including blogs, user generated video and podcasts as well as read customer ratings and reviews.
6. Then there are Inactives who neither create nor consume social content of any kind.

By examining where your current clients are represented in any of these group, you can determine what sort of Social Media Strategy makes sense to reach your customers. Here is an example, say you determine that your customers are primarily Creators. It would then make sense to develop a strategy that empowers users to create programs about your brands and benefits. Consequently, your strategy would be quite different if your core customer base are Collectors or Joiners because it would be more passive or one-sided.