Connected Knowledge

In my last post, I talked a bit about the need for a “benevolent dictator” to shepherd the implementation, adoption and perpetuation of social computing initiatives.  Often the person or persons in that oversight role will have a vision or a set of goals, but rarely do they have a clear plan of how to achieve those goals.  Determining what success means and how to measure it has proven even more elusive.  Web analytics has blossomed from a cottage industry into a full fledged discipline as a way to inform strategies on the web, but the field has yet to get its arms around social media in any systematic way.  Back in April of 2007 Forrester Research analysts Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li took a first stab at it by introducing the notion of “Social Technographics.”

Li and Bernoff discuss Social Technographics and its application at length in their book  Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies but the idea itself is pretty simple. As Li writes in her original blog post:

Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal.  But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.

Forrester approached this by defining six levels of participation on the participatory web. These range from “Spectators” who consume social media but do not contribute, up to “Creators,” those who publish a web page, maintain a blog or upload media to site like YouTube.  These participation levels are more roles or profiles rather than more customary segmentations. Each level may or may not overlap.  As Bernoff notes, “people participate in multiple behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower rungs.”

Over the past couple of years, this ladder of participation has proven to be a useful way to analyze the target audiences for social media efforts and inform strategies accordingly. On Tuesday, Forrester expanded its ladder to include a new level of participation, the “Conversationalist.”  This is an individual who participates at least weekly in microblogging, such as Twitter, LinkedIn status changes or Facebook “what’s on your mind?” updates.

What makes the ladder compelling is the consumer data upon which it is based.  The rule of thumb for Web 2.0 users has always been “1x9x90”.  That is, 1% of the user population create and contribute content, 9% comment and critique and the remaining 90% passively consume.  Forrester’s Social Technographics show this to be too simplistic.  Consumers tend to move back and forth between rungs on the ladder depending on the context.  By writing this blog, I am firmly on the Creator rung but only in the context of my professional life.  I’m an avid music lover and follow many artist blogs and websites but don’t generally contribute beyond rating mp3s, so in that context, I’m a Collector.  I’m a bit of a news junkie so I often visit The Economist, CNN, and the New York Times, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted a comment, so in the news world I’m purely a Spectator.

Li and Bernoff advocate using the ladder to develop your social media roadmap and overall strategy.

I’ve used the "participation ladder"to help figure out which social strategies to deploy first – and also how to encourage users to "climb up", so to speak, from being Spectators to becoming more engaged. It’s my belief that not everyone is cut out from the start to be a Creator; nor is everyone inclined to jump with both feet into social networking. Companies seeking to engage customers with these new tools need to understand where their audiences are with this categorization.

I believe this approach may be even more appropriate for collaborative efforts within the enterprise.  Any sizable enterprise is basically the Internet in microcosm.  Most Enterprise 2.0 effort fail when they do not take this into account.  Too often everyone on staff is expected to assume the duties of a Creator when many simply aren’t cut out for it, though I believe it is possible to bring them along over time, to help the “climb up” as Li puts it.  For example, someone may not be ready to write a lengthy knowledgebase article, but might be perfectly comfortable microblogging their status and questions on Yammer or instant messaging with GoogleTalk.  The point is that as these tools are rolled out across an enterprise the different types of participation need to be taken into account, planned for and accommodated.  The new and improved Social Technographics framework is a good place to start.