Taylor's social media world

This one isn’t quite as easy for me. In the past I have treated social media as an obligation, not a diversion or as a way to stay in touch with friends. I think there are two main reasons for this. For one, I am the type of person who likes to sit down with one friend and talk for an hour in order to really catch up with them; I am less excited about talking to thirty friends for two minutes each. Second, since I come from the music industry a social media presence is considered part of the job. As a result my Facebook friends list has a sizable percentage of people that I have never met, and I haven’t felt real personally connected to the experience.

My group and I have talked about how our persona, Taylor, does use social media however, and she would be a much better subject for this blog than I. First, a little bit about Taylor and her social media use in order to frame this discussion. Taylor is 30, lives in San Francisco with her boyfriend, and is successful in her sales career. She does use social media; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, foursquare, etc. One of her characteristics is that she is the last of the early adopters. She knows when something is becoming cool and she jumps on board before it explodes to the masses, but not before it has been somewhat proven.

Taylor keeps a close eye on her social media outlets, but she just doesn’t initiate much or take big risks. She ‘likes’ a lot of things, says happy birthday to people, and posts pretty pictures of the Bay Area-all in all pretty safe stuff. She doesn’t make edgy comments or even that many jokes, mainly because although she knows she is smart, she does not perceive of herself as particularly witty or original.

So what kind of insights can you glean from Taylor’s social media usage in terms both of content and interaction patterns? I mentioned that Taylor is one of the last early adopters for a trend, and this describes a certain kind of person. It is kind of person who needs to be current for current’s sake, and she doesn’t have time to waste fiddling with new trends that aren’t going to stick. She is not an ‘influencer’ in the sense of having a lot of Twitter followers or other similar metrics, but she is an influencer in the sense that she has clout. When she adopts something new people around her know it is going to stay and it is worth looking into. This applies to phone apps, social media sites, fashion, whatever. People like Taylor are important bellwethers of what is going to be taking off in the next two months. When she likes a company on Facebook, it is worth noticing.

People like Taylor are on the cusp of major life-changing decisions. She lives with her boyfriend, but they aren’t married. She thinks they will tie the knot eventually, but isn’t sure if they will have kids. She is career conscious but not sure if she wants to let her career define her, and now is the time of her life she needs to decide. Social media is a very easy way to find people on the cusp of life changing decisions and watch as they make the transition into the next phase of their life. There are a lot of interesting questions you could ask about people here. When they make these transitions, do they really decide on their path and pursue it or do they let their path unfold in front of them? These are very different types of people. Do they make their decisions publicly (ie post about their thought process) or are they more private? Do they make decisions similar to their peers’ or do they strike out on their own path?

These sites can also point to where people are focused in their life. Some people are very internally focused. They rely on their family and close friends to fulfill their emotional needs and there interactions are much more focused on family and close friends. They predominantly post pictures of their kids and family. Then there are the people that are more outwardly focused. They tend to tend to post pictures of places and events and groups of friends in bars. They tend to explore the world to fulfill their emotional needs. There is of course overlap, and this distinction can change as a person moves through life, but it is interesting to think about the differences of people who gain satisfaction from searching and experiencing new things and people who gain satisfaction from focusing on the environment that they live in.

Thinking about the potential of Facebook makes my head explode. One eighth of the world’s population resides there, and they segment themselves for you on an infinite number of characteristics. Did they like Williams-Sonoma? That certainly conjures an image of a certain type of person. Did they like Abercrombie? That conjures another. Did they like them both? And what the hell does that mean?!? The potential for uncovering customer insights is vast, and with no playbook on how to decode them the most important insights will be found by people that can most creatively piece together the amazing amount of information now available.