A lot of marketers miss the boat when they try to measure social media value in their marketing strategy. While it matters how many likes, re-tweets, etc occur, it matters more what the value and engagement of those customers is rather than just the activity around the site or campaign. In other words, it’s great to get the activity for sharing, seo and social proof, but if you are trying to generate leads, sell something or elicit some other response, make sure you are engaging the right prospects.

There is a great segmentation infographic I found on the Smart Insights blog which was developed by a Canadian company, Aimia, that specializes in loyalty management. They believe that marketers typically miss the true intent and motivations behind visitors/customers social media use and that if you do not take that into consideration as a marketer, you will probably miss the mark. Proper segmentation and an understanding of the true intent behind the use of social platforms allows marketers to target and communicate effectively.

The model breaks social media users into six distinct groups: No Shows (41%), Newcomers (15%), Onlookers (16%), Cliquers (6%), Mix-n-Minglers (19%), Sparks (3%), all of which have distinct persona types that are useful to know if you are a marketer.

Below is a great infographic that spells out the six groups, who they are and what they do. As a marketer, you can see how some of the groups are obviously more engaged than others and hopefully you can see some other details that can help you craft your message and frequency to better engage the groups you are targeting. There is also a great chart at the bottom that shows how to market to different personas.