According to a recent study conducted by Rapleaf on the use of social media, Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male, MySpace Users 63% female, 36% male, Friendster Users are 58% female, 41% male and Hi5 Users are 60% female, 39% male. So what is it about web 2.0 that breaks the old rule of male early adopters?
The study's findings were reviewed on 5/19/08 in Business Week article - The Social Media Gender Gap . The article offers a number of theories regarding why the gap is occurring, but knowing that more women than men are using social media is not as important as knowing how they are using it. Without this knowledge, a LOT of money, time and resources will be waisted.
In the book groundswell, author, Charlene Li provides six profiles that need to be understood when developing social media strategies.
- The Creators, the consumers who produces, posts, maintains a web page, uploads photos etc.
- The Critic, the consumer who reviews and recommends
- The Collectors, the consumers who collects and aggregates information, and lastly
- The Joiners, those consumers who maintain participate and main profiles on social networking sites
- The Spectators, those people who consume what the other produce
- The Inactives, those who do not participate at this time
Each of the above groups require different strategies to encourage and support their desired social activity. Some of these groups will be more dominant, demanding more time and attention, and some will only want to do one activity. This becomes a challenge to the marketer when selecting software tools and services which often offer a 'take it all or leave it' total solution. Our advice is to listen and observe what your market is doing and then focus on THE dominant group profile that you are trying to reach. Build or buy the tool they want, not the one that your agency, or IT or web or brand folks want.
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