The Social Technographics Profile

The Social Technographics Profile is a tool that allows people in business to examine and then create strategies based on the groundswell tendencies of any group of people, anywhere. It’s similar to demographics and psychographics but focuses on technology behaviours with a purpose to concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies. This profile is designed to allow you to compare any two groups of people, its core is a way to group people based on the groundswell activities in which they participate. If that group happens to be your customers or followers, you can use their Social Technographics Profile to build an appropriate social strategy.

The featured image includes the following groups in the Social Technographics Profile: The creators, conversationalists, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. In the case of groundswell, the key is to reach the creators and critics. For creators and conversationalists, critics are essential to maintain online interaction.

Unfortunately, the Forrester Tool was not available but it is still possible to make a reasonable estimate of the social activity your customer or follower base. A custom survey can be asked to find out what technologies they use. The primary target for this activity is 18-25 year olds in Canada.

The final question asks why people participate in groundswell. There are many possible answers which include their emotional motivation and what they get out of it. According to the textbook, some reasons for participation include to keep up friendships, make new friends, succumbing to social pressure from existing friends, paying it forward, and other various impulses (Li & Bernoff, 2011). The biggest challenge isn’t whether you are mastering the technology or delighting your followers, its whether you’re accomplishing a business goal and how you will measure that success. To get there you will need not only the data shown in this chapter but also a clear strategy for groundswell thinking.

Reference

Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell. Boston: Harvard Business Review.