The Social Media Adoption Process

Posted by gordon on June 20th, 2008 filed in social media

Yesterday, I received numerous invitations to join a new Web 2.0 site called - Plurk.

My first thoughts were “No…not another one.” But I joined and spent most of my productive day inviting or accepting people as my friend.

But, what excited me wasn’t Plurk itself, it was seeing for the first time social media Thought Leaders taking up and interacting with a new technology.

People like Robert Scoble, Ann Handley, Darren Rowse and Gavin Heaton.

I felt like a young David Attenborough viewing animals interacting in their natural habitat. No…I’m not saying these Thought Leaders were animals…it’s the only analogy I could come up with.

Then my marketing brain kicked-in. I couldn’t stop thinking about - ‘The Social Media Adoption Process.’ How do social media entrepreneurs and innovators get their ideas across from Thought Leaders to Early Social Media Adopters and then on to the mainstream?

Knowing that today’s blogosphere is full of independent voices trying to speak and connect, I tried to map the Social Media Adoption Process. Here are my five clear social media groups with differing values:

1. Social Media Innovators are looking to be the first, rules are pointless and they jump quickly from one breaking idea to another. They don’t like the mainstream.
2. Thought Leaders infuse and infect whole social networks. They are respected for their opinions and ideas which are then quickly passed on to their communities. These people can make or break, set or champion new social media trends or products. Robert Scoble is like this. You can say he has captured a leadership space in the minds of social media geeks.
3. Early Social Media Adopters are analytical and deliberate by nature. They embrace new opinions and ideas before the mainstream. Embracing ideas, early social media adopters invest a great deal of time and effort in gaining knowledge and experience by interacting with new social media trends or products. The success of any new brand depends on reaching this group.
4. Social Media Mainstream Adopters are normally hesitant to embrace new ideas. Only when it’s become acceptable by early social media adopters will this group try it. Examples of Web 2.0 brands that have reached this group include Facebook, Myspace, Youtube & flickr.
5. Social Media Laggards traditionally see change or social networking trends with suspicion or just want to hang on to existing technologies.

The Sticky Media Gap

Lee Iacocca once said “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can not get them across, your ideas will not get you anywhere”

Social Media brands have to understand after the initial hype, brilliant ideas have to cross ‘The Sticky Media Gap.’ A big gap that exists between social media Thought Leaders and Early Social Media Adopters…and like traditional media - it has to stick.

If an idea does not attract and win over enough Thought Leaders - a brilliant idea will fall down.

Plurk is now facing this challenge.