Which type of social media group do you belong to?:

Contributor- Reviews products, answers questions and contributes to the community.

Creator - Creates the community, blog, podcast or video

Opportunist - Provides feedback, vote, ask questions, forward to others

Lurker - Reads product reviews, read blogs and message boards

According to a research study by Gartner:, a new online group called “Generation Virtual” is defined not by demographics and psychographics but by achievement, accomplishments and their preference for using digital media. The Generation Virtual group is split into the four segments above, which, says Gartner, should be marketed to differently online to increase return on investment.

Pity the poor people who are labeled “Lurkers”. You’d think that Gartner would be able to come up with a better name than that.

Imagine a mailing list segmented by the groups above and your name ends up in the “Lurker” file. Instead of mail or email being addresses to “Dear Dog Lover”, Dear Boat Enthusiast or even Dear Contributor”, they would begin with “Dear Lurker”. That would get your Neighborhood Watch twitching.

So who can come up with some creative ideas on how to market to the “Lurkers”?

Tags: direct response marketing, Email Marketing, Gartner, social media marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 5:44 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.