PEW, Internet Customers, and People who Deserve Respect
View CommentsA study that was released in January 2006, called Internet Use and Email, brought to light some growing statistics about where the customers are and who is spending money online. The participants in the study were as young as 12 and as old as 76+ years. The population was segmented into five year groups 12-17; 18-24; 25-29; 30-34; 35-29; 40-44; and so on
- At the extreme youngest (12-17) and oldest (76+) ages approximately 42% were likely to buy products online.
- In the main population (18-75) approximately 67% are buying products online.
- The most popular online cash activities are travel and banking.
- Those who book travel and banking are also highly likely to have high speed access.
What does this information mean to a corporate blogger? It means that the likelihood is that blog readers are also online customers and that those online customers have gotten comfortable enough to do their banking online.
If an organization has been a “slow adopter” of blogging, it also can mean that corporate blog readers are likely to be more “blog savvy” than corporate bloggers. The difference between the brick and mortar culture and that of the blogosphere is subtle but important.
In other words, the blogosphere has cultural conventions and rules of respect that these customers already know and follow. In order to avoid the faux pas that can occur when joining any new culture, the wise organization will listen to learn how people talk to each other before trying to talk at their customers via a blog. They will get to know the territory before they move into town, learning the mores. Those mores are the foundation for the authentic interaction that builds community. The community goal is an exchange, an experience that is valuable to both the customer and the organization.
If an enterprise does that well, the folks in the PEW study will respond in kind and the touted blog conversation will become a dialogue and then a relationship that is broader, deeper, and more fruitful than most relationships the company enjoys in the brick and mortar world.
If not, at best the enterprise will enjoy a static blog that is ignored; at worst it will enjoy a dynamic blog in which customers let the enterprise know that they are people who deserve the organization’s respect.
It’s all a matter of knowing that there are people on the other side of every computer screen, people with whom relationships can be made, people who deserve individual attention and respect.
Liz Strauss
