For the past few years Forrester Research has been tracking the adoption of social media in different categories:

Creators, who write content and make podcasts and videos

Critics, who post comments, ratings and reviews

Collectors, who use RSS Feeds to gather information,  those who tag and share content

Joiners, who create profiles on social networking sites and actively use those sites

Spectators, who read/listen/watch the  content created by others

Inactives – those who are not active in any form of social media

This is the third year Forrester has done the survey and the numbers speak very loudly for themselves.

Looking at the data by age group =  the under 35s are more than 90% active and even the over 55s are more than two thirds engaged.

For the first time Forrester also looked at the results n Europe and found that overall people there are slower to adopt the social technologies – but of course there are differences country to country.  If you’re familiar with Italians you’ll not be surprised to learn that Italy has the highest number of creators.

For more details see the summary of Rebecca Jennings’ report on social technologies in Europe.

No matter who you market to, and in what country, you need to know what your customers are doing. These surveys can help you take that first step, says Forrester. And to help you they have a widget you can use to find out what your customers are doing.  Once you know what your customers are doing, you can do a better social media strategy

Photo credit: Intersection Consulting