Lego, Ladders, and Social Media

I'm currently reading a book called "groundswell" and it covers a lot of the basics of social media.  Some of it is incredibly interesting, while some parts seem a little obvious.  I'm still early on in the book and nothing has grabbed my attention quite like a group of people labeled AFOL's.  What in the world is an AFOL?!?!?

An Adult Fan Of Lego (I have to admit I didn't see that one coming) I never even knew groups like this existed (no offense intended if anyone is part of this group).  But then I got thinking this is the internet and there's a lot of crazy stuff out there.  So what does this have to do with social media???  Let me ask you this, how in the world does Lego find and market to these people?  Cause according to "groundswell" AFOL's are a $50 million piece of their customer pie.

It starts by breaking down users of the internet just like rungs on a ladder.  I just happened to have found a ladder with the exact break down. (That was lucky)

So who fits where?  How many are in each rung?  How does this effect social media?
Numbers of people in each rung vary depending on country, age, gender, education, and many other variables.  The book talked about Lego lovers, but lets try this with a few different variables.  What if we were looking for cliental in commercial real estate, who fits the bill? ........ Anybody? ....... (Everyone is now flipping through their G+ circles, Facebook friends, Twitter followers trying to find someone).  Well lucky for us the internet has all the tools we need.  A friendly little group called Forrester Research has generated a tool that tells you the exact percentages within each group, with only a few characteristics needed.

In this case lets look at the results for a person that typically fits the ideal commercial real estate investor.  Let's give them an age of 35-44, geographically we'll put them in Canada, (cause that's where I call home) and we'll leave them gender neutral (because you don't have to be a specific gender to invest in real estate, we're past that).  And the RESULTS.........

Utilizing the information from the ladder and combining it with the information from Forrester's we can see that only 17% of the target market are contributors.  The reality is that the information from Forrester turns the ladder into more of a triangle as the numbers get considerably larger the further down you go.  This now gives you a group to focus on, (hint hint, it rhymes with reators and starts with a C) .......... CREATORS have tremendous influence on the critics, collectors, joiners, and spectators. (basically everyone down the ladder)  This means that if you were trying to target a specific group through social media, your best results would come from putting your efforts towards the people at the top of the food chain (or in this case the ladder).  Influencing the influencers is what you want to be doing, not trying to reach everyone and their dog.

Now back to Lego ...... This stuffs amazing.