More critics are cropping up online. Are businesses ready?

Critics, creators and spectators are all on the rise in social media, according to a new report from Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff.

Bernoff looked at the number of “US online adults” who are using social tools. The overall percentage rose from a little over half in 2007 to three-quarters in 2008.

To help visualize the different types of social media users, Forrester created this excellent visual last year:

The new data showed that every category — except “Inactives” — grew in the past year as a percentage of Web users.

Check out the year-over-year numbers:

While a few more people have made the always-intimidating jump to “Creator”, what surprised me was the growth of the “Critics” category.

There’s nothing new about letting people review products online, but it definitely seems to be an increasingly mainstream activity.

So what does this mean to businesses trying to use social media? If you’re one of them, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Have you given your visitors or customers any way to weigh in on your products through your own site? And no, listing an e-mail address on your “Contact Us” page doesn’t really count.

2. Do you know where and how your products or services are being critiqued? Such reviews used to be limited to books, movies and hotels. These days, you can review anything from dentists to day cares.

3. All these reviews — even the bad ones that make you cringe — are creating priceless data. Are you incorporating it into your research, development and planning?

Comments

[windo]

I saw some preso from the folks at Alloy (college marketing agency) earlier this year. They shared findings among college kids being mostly made up of "promoters" i.e. 83% would forwarding content to friends that they saw relevant. 44% saw themselves at producers/creators of content, 42% as editors/critics of found content, and 38% as absorbers/spectators.

re: point #2 above. Yelp has been a tool I've seen some small business use to talk to their fans and haters.

[Tim Brunelle]

David,

I recommend cruising through http://getsatisfaction.com/. Lots of interesting feedback there, and an attempt to organize it all and better enable marketers to react to criticism.

About the survey--maybe this is good news for marketers? In essence, the more critics, the more insights. Right? And in the tighter economy, more critics online should equal greater, more efficient access to consumer insights.

Rock on.

Tim

[Ari Herzog]

The key, David, is whether the corporate CEO can answer those three questions without consulting the annual report or advice of colleagues, yet providing the same answer as the corporate customer.

[Chris Butler]

David,

Thanks for sharing this. I just published our October WebSmart newsletter, which was about online reputation management (http://www.newfangled.com/is_perception_reality). I added a comment referencing your article. Glad I saw it!

Chris