Not All Social Network Users Alike – Four Types of LinkedIn Users – Which Type are You?

First Ever Public Study Concerning Business Oriented Social Network Giant LinkedIn.com 

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the MRA Fall conference in Las Vegas together with executives from LinkedIn and SPSS. Anderson Analytics conducted the study in two phases, first a database exploratory of 2,000 randomly sampled LinkedIn “seed” records together with their 1st level connections (53,000+ records). This included some text minin…

First Ever Public Study Concerning Business Oriented Social Network Giant LinkedIn.com 

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the MRA Fall conference in Las Vegas together with executives from LinkedIn and SPSS. Anderson Analytics conducted the study in two phases, first a database exploratory of 2,000 randomly sampled LinkedIn “seed” records together with their 1st level connections (53,000+ records). This included some text mining and link analysis to understand what user behavior level variables were available.

The second phase included a random sampling of 12,000 US LinkedIn members as well as primary research conducted via an online survey. One of the first things we did was create a user segmentation and found four segments:

• “Savvy Networkers” are likely to have started using social networking earlier than others, are more tech savvy, and more likely to be active on other SNS sites like Facebook. Savvy Networkers have the most connections (61 on average) and are more likely than other segments to use LinkedIn for a wide variety of purposes other than job searching. Savvy Networkers have the second highest average personal income ($93,500) and may often have the word “Consultant” in their job description.

• “Senior Executives” are somewhat less tech savvy and is using LinkedIn to connect to their existing corporate networks. They have power jobs which they are quite content with, and are likely to have been invited by a colleague and then realized how many key contacts were on the site and started building connections (32 on average). Senior Executives have the highest average personal income ($104,000) and have titles such as Owner, Partner, Executive, or Associate.

• “Late Adopters” are likely to have received numerous requests from friends and co-workers before deciding to join. They are somewhat less tech savvy and are careful in how they use LinkedIn, tending to connect only to close friends and colleagues and have the fewest number of connections (23 on average). Late Adopters have the lowest average personal income ($88,000) and have titles such as Teacher, Medical Professional, Lawyer, or the word “Account” or “Assistant” in their job description.

• “Exploring Options” may be working, but are open and looking for other job options often on CareerBuilder.com, perhaps in part because they have the lowest average personal income ($87,500). They are fairly tech savvy and use SNS for both corporate and personal interests.

If you are on LinkedIn and are curious to find out which segment you would be likely to fall into we have provided a typing tool on our website here:

http://www.andersonanalytics.com/litype/

A smaller set of variables were selected to predict segment membership with about 80% accuracy. I’ll be curious to hear how well you think the brief profile summary provided at the end fits with your use of LinkedIn?

I’m very excited about utilizing Social Networks for Marketing Research. Leveraging data and text mining together with primary research will allow marketers and market researchers some powerful predictive tools in reaching their target demographics.

Tom

[Anderson Analytics LinkedIn Press Release]

Link to original postTom H. C. Anderson – Anderson Analytics