Forrester has updated its social media ladder, part of its ongoing Technographics research series, to include the new group Conversationalists.

According to Forrester, commenting on North American only data:

They’re one-third of the online population. They’re 56% female. If you imagine that they’re just youngsters, you’re wrong: 70% are 30 or older. Their household incomes are about $2,100 above the average online consumer, but their level of engagement is sky-high.

Forrester released its latest APAC region report this month – focussed this time on India. The report does not include the conversationalist group, but I expect we will see this appearing in reports moving forward.

The Forrester Technographics report and particularly the social media ladder is an invaluable tool for providing an overview of the different ways people engage with content online and I use it a lot during client education, especially because it has such rich APAC region data.

If presenting this one thing to remember is that the groups are not mutually exclusive – i.e. a person can be a member of more than one group. I also find it handy to work my way up the ladder taking the audience on a journey of increasing engagement groups.

UPDATE

I came across the graph below after publishing this post. It is an interesting graph that shows movement between the different groups on the social media ladder over a period of three years. Again this is US only data:

There is also this handy tool, that will give you the split of groups by country and age group.