I have almost finished reading an excellent book on social media and the way it’s changing business and marketing. The book is called Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This book has a really solid perspective and methodology for identifying the type of people you want to reach as a social media marketer and then building your strategy based on that information.

I regularly tell people that it’s not enough to know what the social media tools are or even how to use them. You must also know the context with which to use them. That’s why I’m so adamant that content must be your marketing strategy if you’re going to use these tools. Content is a big piece of the context you need to grasp.

What Groundswell helped me refine in my thinking is that we cannot look at everyone we want to reach with a social media campaign the same way, meaning some people are more likely to participate in a social network than others or comment on a blog, or listen to a podcast. Likewise, some people can be tapped to join you in making content whereas others will simply be spectators.

Handy Profile Tool

On the Groundswell website you can play with the very handy “profile tool” which essentially let’s you get a sense of age, nationality, and gender demographics and their relative relationships to social media technology. For instance you will find that:

• 39% of American men and women ages 18-24 are at the top of the social technographics ladder in the Creators category (that means they publish on blogs or websites and upload audio and video files they created.)
• The percentage is lower in the Creator category as the people get older.
• In the 25-34 age group the number of Creators drops a bit to 30%.
• The percentage drops sharply to 17% for ages 35-44.
• It continues to decline to 11% for ages 45-54.
• The percentage of Creators finally bottoms out at 5% for ages 55 and older.

This is the kind of good information you can have to make informed decisions for social media marketing. If I wanted to create a contest where people upload their videos to win a big prize then I might see some pretty good success among the younger two groups (18-35 year olds) but much beyond that the number of people who would create a video is slim. Depending on the company and who you want to reach, this can make all the difference. With more information comes better decisions and many times better decisions lead to more success. Check out the entire Groundswell book for a lot more on this. It’s certainly worth the read.

Becky is a marketing strategist for a large company here in Nashville. One evening she was planning some snacks for an evening with friends when her search for a snack led her to purchase a book she didn’t know she wanted. Here’s the email Becky sent to her director the next day:

“I Googled Chili’s because I wanted to find out how much it would cost to get chips and salsa to go. When I Googled Chili’s, this link came up that said “Brand Autopsy: Would you miss Chili’s?” That intrigued me, so I clicked on it and found the blog of a marketing guy who used to work for Starbucks and Whole Foods. He, in turn, raved about this new book that is all about marketing and social networks. I thought it might be something that our whole team would benefit from. Isn’t it ironic that I was looking for chips and salsa and found a marketing book? But it hit the right audience at the right time!”

I really like this story at a number of different levels because:

• It shows the power and influence of blogs even in the most unlikely of connections.
• It reminds me that people trust blogs that seem trustworthy.
• It reminds me that your target audience cannot be segmented so neatly all the time because Becky the marketer wasn’t looking for a book but she found one and bought it (and will likely buy one for the entire marketing team at the company) when she was Becky the snack shopper.
• It reminds me of the power of a Google search and how blogs could make (or break) the positioning of your brand.

The book Becky found was called “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social Technologies” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I’m reading this book now too but I found out about it through Twitter via Jeremiah Owyang.

I’m keenly aware of the irony here (and also the affirmation of the power and influence of social media) that a book called Groundswell benefited from the groundswell in at least two cases I can point to directly (mine and Becky’s) and I’m sure countless others. So the question is, what are you waiting for if you’re not getting in yet? Don’t fight the groundswell.