Stay-at-home moms, first-time home buyers and eco-friendly consumers all use social media sites, but they log on for very different reasons, according to a new report from a consumer research company in New York, as reported by AdAge.com.

Working with Advertising Age, Simmons Research recently dissected its National Consumer Study to identify categories of individuals who tend to be active on blogs, message boards and sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Those categories include:

• The Socially Isolated. People who are "generally unhappy with their lives and feel alone" are 12 percent "more likely than the average person to use blogs, message boards or social-networking sites. They also post comments on blogs at least twice a month; personal, music, consumer-product and video-game blogs are most visited."

• Green Customers. These consumers "prefer to buy products in recycled packages and eschew products that pollute. They are older (50-plus) and are most likely to go online for health or financial information."

• Brand-Loyal Consumers. "This group shies away from buying unknown brands just for a bargain and prefers to buy brand-name goods ... They're 21 percent more likely to read environmental blogs and 22 percent more likely to use professional-networking sites to make new contacts."

• Stay-at-Home Moms. "They visit parenting blogs five times more often than average. They're also active on social networks, blogs and chat forums but tend to stay away from podcasting."

• First-Time Home Buyers. "This under-35 set also includes very active social networkers, bloggers and message-board users. They also rank high in texting, podcasting and business networking. They use social networks to keep in touch but also to find information."

The story also reported that while nearly 80 percent of marketers "see social media as a way to gain a competitive edge ... Fewer than 8 percent have budgets devoted to" marketing through that media.

For Richard Dudley of The Bloomery in Butler, Pa., the question of social media sites isn't black and white. While the shop actively blogs and has posted videos to YouTube, Dudley says MySpace and Facebook haven't been fertile marketing ground.

"Neither of these sites provides tools better than what I can do in other ways," he says. "Their allure is solely in the audience they command, but one that I think doesn't want to be overtly marketed to in these venues."

To read more about what consumers do online — women, in specific — turn to a previous issue of E-Brief that highlights the sites most visited by the female demographic, which comprises more than 50 percent of online users.

--Mary Westbrook
mwestbrook@safnow.org

 

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