The social media front has created many quandaries for marketers over the last couple of years. The most well-known challenges focus around capitalizing on existing conversations, mitigating bad chatter or determining whether or not their brand has the potential for a social media voice. Often, marketers are facing a combination of all the above.

Through an online survey conducted by Trone in December of 2008, some key insights emerged to assist marketers in determining how to stimulate conversation around their industry and brand.

One segment, Technological Drivers, surfaced as being the primary providers of user-generated content and conversation online. The main indicators of their activity are based on their projected online contribution in the next 30 days as indicated by the statistics below:

• 66% are likely to contribute to a blog
• 61% will publish to their own blog
• 59% plan to contribute to a wiki
• 61% will post at least one video
• 69% contribute to question and advice sites

These data points only scratch the surface of their involvement online. The frequency in which they are developing and influencing content often doubles and triples the activity percentages in the other segments.

What’s important to note is not how different your brand’s target audience may be from this segment, but who from this segment are your customers. The realization and identification of this behavioral niche can help unlock the key to activate conversation for your brand.

Loyalty and advocacy within this segment are essential to your brand’s social media effectiveness. Their ability to disseminate information in opportune areas ensures that the right content will be present when the rest of the target audience is searching for, or gaining, awareness for your brand. Most notably the biggest impact will be your brand’s relevance in organic searches and presence in community and discussion forums close to your target.

Engaging this segment does have its risks as other brands have witnessed. Marketers must ensure that they are building the proper relationships by benchmarking existing conversations around the industry/brand, observing how this segment interacts and what motivates them. Ignoring this or not assessing it correctly may be detrimental to the brand.

Though the biggest opportunity to activate conversation for your brand lies within the Technological Drivers segment, most segments show varying degrees of contribution to online content. What’s important in increasing the target’s participation is finding what triggers cause them to speak on the brand’s behalf. Findings show that often these triggers are based on life events or topics which compel them. The challenge lies in discovering insights that help to uncover these motivators. Research that helps to connect to their behaviors is essential to understanding the full range and opportunity within the segment.

As we move forward, the brands that will be the most successful on the social media front will be the ones that are able to activate the niches within their customer base through varying strategies to create engagement and promote advocacy. How will your brand be measured against this standard?