A few years ago, Charlene Li (now of Altimeter) developed the original Social Technographics ladder whilst at Forrester as a way to explain your markets social behaviour online.

For its time, this was a very good way to look at behaviour and personality types on social networks…and as time has passed, the segments and descriptions have changed.

As a result, Forrester has recently revised the Social Technographics Ladder, and most notably, have made room for Twitter!

In all that time, only one thing has been bugging me: there was no place for Twitter.

Previously, the behaviour demonstrated on Twitter could not be nicely fitted against any of the categories of behaviour.  Well, now with the addition of the category “conversationalists” Twitter can be explained!

So how can this data and model be used for good?  The team at Forrester give three examples of how the social technographics ladder could be used;

1. Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven’t jumped on it, you’re late.

2. Profile your customer base, and see what they’re ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People is the first step in the POST process.)

3. Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

How have you used this data before, or how will you be using it in the future??

Do a survey across your office – do the number match up?

Where do you fit…and are you atypical of this category?

I am a creator…you?

Forrester Social Technographics Ladder