Whether you work predominantly in offline marketing (like I used to) or work predominantely in online marketing (like I do now), knowing your audience and where you can find them is invaluable.
Blogs, boards and social media in general have been around for many years. However, like most product lifecycles, they’re still in their infancy, still in the growth mode. Being so new, many people and companies are trying to carve out a social media expertise for themselves. That’s fine and good, but don’t get myopic.
The United States population now is about 303+ million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Okay, but really, most of us are not marketing to youth. As of July 2003, there were 217.8 million people age 18 and older, with a total U.S. population of about 291 million people. So about 75% of the U.S. population were adults (18+ yoa) in 2003. Let’s assume that’s consistent with 2008.
According to eMarketer, nearly 194 million people in the U.S. are online, as of a February 2008 report.
That eMarketer report doesn’t distinguish if that population consists of adults only or all age groups, so I’ll assume all. That’s only 64% of the total U.S. population (194/303). Not bad, but I’d think it’d be more. If you use the same 75% figure as above — that 75% of the U.S. population consists of those 18+ yoa — then only about 145.5 million (0.75×194)U.S. adults are online.
How many are using social media technologies like blogs, boards, sharing videos, rating products, etc.?
According to Forrester’s Social Technographics data obtained in late 2006, only 48% of the U.S. adult, online, consuming* population are using social technologies. It’s simple math since the graph stats 52% are not in any of the categories Forrester measured. (*I’m not sure what % of the adult online population Forrester counts as “consumers” so my numbers may be off, but still good for the point being made.)
If you take 48% of the 145.5 million adults online (0.48×145.5), you get a little less than 70 million U.S. adults online using social media technologies.
To have success in social media, word-of-mouth activities, you really don’t need a lot of people. And, with the ability to niche your market, you likely only need fewer than that to call a social media marketing campaign a success. So, that’s still. a. lot. of. people.
However, don’t get caught up in your own online, interactive, digital world and think “everyone’s online.” They’re not. A sizeable part of your and your clients’/employer’s audience may be offline or — believe it or not — simply not using social media.
The good news is that, enough of them may be online. And, likely that online, adult, U.S. population using social technologies will be growing. (But, that’s another post for another day.)
– Mike
