Social Networks? A Question of Personality
An article by Margherita Pagani et al. provides fresh insights to marketing managers willing to include effective social networking features in their commercial websites.
Margherita Pagani (Università Bocconi, Department of Marketing), Charles Hofacker and Ronald Goldsmith (both Florida State University) in The Influence of Personality on Active and Passive Use of Social Networking Sites (forthcoming in Psychology and Marketing) argue that two personality traits such as innovativeness and expressiveness are significant in explaining people's use of social networks.
The researchers present two studies investigating the topic. In Study 1 (753 interviewees) they find that innovativeness is positively related to both active (content production) and passive (browsing) use of social networks, while Study 2 (277 interviewees) reveals that self-identity expressiveness and social identity expressiveness positively influence only active use of the sites.
Much of the value creation in a social network in the context of a commercial site comes from customer-to-customer processes, as confirmed by successful cases like Amazon (customers' book reviews work as purchase recommendations), Hewlett-Packard (the virtual community provides technical support) or Texas Instruments (the community trades tips about the calculators). But to accomplish similar results companies "must clear two different hurdles", the three authors write: "First, they must induce the target audience to join the community, and second they must convince at least some of those who join to virtually step in front of the group and actively produce content".
The detection of the relation between innovativeness and the use of social networks can be useful to managers because "the findings suggest that if managers can identify the more innovative users among the social network citizenry, they can encourage them to join and then actively contribute. Given the innovators' knowledge and interest in the topic, perhaps this encouragement might take the form of providing new topic-relevant information or opportunities to contribute that the innovator can take advantage".
From the relation between expressiveness and active use of social networks derives the suggestion to emphasize the identity benefits of contributing to the social network. Moreover, "the social network platform itself might be designed with added features that promote the expression of identity, such as blogs, video casting and other self-presentation activities. In fact, a content analysis of the most-linked-to blogs confirms that "A-list" bloggers reveal more information about themselves than other bloggers and actively engage in impression management. Network managers could celebrate those who excel in expressing their identities, thereby encouraging more and more of this aspect of use".
Social networks, the researchers state, turn out not to be pure peer networks, but complex ecologies of different personality types simply consuming or also creating content, i.e two-sided networks where the two sides make a content exchange and each side is likely to react differently to the marketing mix offered by the network manager. The manager's challenge is to strike the right balance between the two sides.