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The term "demographics" is thrown around a lot these days. From a marketing perspective, it refers to the specific characteristics of the audience you're trying to target in a campaign. Demographics can include age, gender, race, education level, income level, and location, as well as factors such as marital status, home ownership, parenthood and so on. Of course, the only demographics we care about, as marketers, are those that affect a person's likelihood of buying our product or service.

One of the chief concerns of any good marketing campaign is whether or not it hits the audience we want to reach. We wouldn't try to promote a skateboarding event in a magazine read mainly by retirees. Why? It doesn't reach our target demographic.

As marketing expands into the cyber realm and social media become ever more central to our marketing campaigns, simply knowing our audience's demographic profile may no longer be enough. We may need a new set of criteria. Social Technographic Profile is a term coined by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell (a book I highly recommend). It's based on a concept of Technographic Segmentation introduced by Dr. Edward Forrest in 1985. In short, a person's social technographic profile defines his or her personality and characteristics when it comes to social media.

What does the person do online? What are his/her web habits? What kinds of sites does s/he visit? How does s/he relate to those sites - actively or passively?

One of the keys to a successful social media strategy is to identity the consumer you're after and his/her technographic profile. This will define which types of social media will be most effective in reaching your audience. In a broad sense you can divide people into one (or more) of the following profiles:

• Creators are people who generate content. This can range from writing blog posts and wiki entries to creating and uploading videos on YouTube. Creators are the true value adders of the web. They make the stuff everyone else comments on.
• Critics are users who rank and review products, web posts, pictures, videos or anything else. They play a key role in influencing what products people buy, what videos people watch, and what competitive events they will enter.
• Joiners are those who join and maintain profiles on social network sites like Facebook and MySpace. They like to connect with others who share their interests.
• Spectators are users who do not actively participate but watch and read from the wings. They silently read others' posts, view others' content without making their presence known. They are by far the most numerous participants on any forum site.
• Inactives are those who are still living in feudal times and have no web activity. They don't really need to be considered in a social media campaign (though, possibly, they can still be reached by pony express).

Let's look at a few real-world examples. What social technographic profiles might you expect to encounter when trying to reach the following groups?

Lifelong recreational sports competitors. These are folks who sail, curl, bowl, golf or play pool at a non-professional level. Although there are some very competitive folks amongst this crowd, most do not participate primarily to win. They do so because they love the sport, the social activities, the atmosphere, etc. This group would probably contain a large number of Spectators and Critics who simply crave information about the sport.

To reach this group, you might focus on getting news about your event posted on relevant blogs and forums. You might consider using a management system that automates this process, such as Compete-At's Event Manager.

X-Sports spectators. These are the people who watch skateboarding, motocross and surfing events. Because you are casting the net wider here and trying to reach not just competitors but audience members, you might look toward Social Network Sites (SNS) and more general forums because the people on those sites will be mainly Joiners and Spectators.

Canasta players. If you want to reach this group online, you might be SOL (and if you do not know what this abbreviation means, you might be part of this group or for those out there who are not English native speakers, it means "shit out of luck"). That's because this group would be mostly Inactives. The only "social media" they participate in takes place in a bingo hall. No disrespect intended.

When you're marketing your event via social media (and who isn't these days?), traditional demographics may be less important than "social technographics." After all, you've first got to reach your audience if you're going to communicate with them. Knowing where they "hang out" online and what they do when they get there can be critical information.

A contribution by Compete-At.com

Compete-At provides tailored event and member management solutions to meet the unique needs of select sports, clubs and associations.
The Compete-At product suite enables your club staff and volunteers to coordinate, promote, and manage events and membership through a robust, yet easy to use system. The Compete-At products are designed and integrated explicitly to streamline historically manual processes, standardize procedures, increase membership and promote sports through technology.
Robust turnkey technology for sport event and member management is now within your reach with no infrastructure costs or additional IT staff to manage.
http://www.compete-at.com