The Social Media Identity Crisis: marketing to the online Jekyll & Hyde

Are there two sides to your character?

Is there a nice 'you' and a 'nasty' you? A 'professional' you and a 'weekend' you?

To an extent, we all exhibit these tendencies. It is human nature and it starting to show up on social media.

New research suggests that the development of social media - and the people who use it - has reached a point where we are doing this more and there is an excellent reason for it.

Some recent figures by Pew Research shows that people are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience - a majority of those who use social networking sites (52%) say they have two or more different profiles. That is up from 42% who had multiple profiles in May 2009.

A small increase, but indicative of a general principle that we need to understand as marketers is we want to use social media effectively to target potential customers.

Simplicity v complexity

Like everything on social media, it all boils down to human nature.

When a complex or far-reaching new technology comes along, we tend to simplify it so we can understand it. Whether we are talking about the very first PC, the first use of the web or the first adoption of social media, it is the same. We start off simple, because otherwise we have no chance at all.

So, to start with, we take small, uncertain steps. We sign up to Facebook. We sign up to Twitter, but we're not sure where it's going, so we don't go too fast.

But here is the problem. We are not simple creatures. We are, by nature, enormously complex, and we lead complex lives. We are driven by sophisticated needs, ranging from the requirement for basic subsistence to our advanced social desires for fulfilment, belonging, esteem and so on. We are torn between emotional and rational considerations. Add to this the constant, churning complexity of the business demands made on the modern worker and we have something that is far from simple.

So we have a mismatch. Complex needs that have, so far, only been met with a simple, one-dimensional use of social media. The complexity we need, hopelessly out of kilter with the simplicity delivered by our initial grasp of social media.

But it is changing fast, and the increasing adoption of multiple online personalities is a symptom of this change. It shows we are learning fast because we realise that we want to do more.

Social media mirrors real life

We need our social media platforms to reflect how we live our lives. And that means we need them to allow us to show complex behaviour patterns - which means being different things to different people. It may sound duplicitous, but it's what we do.

The point is that people have a need to say some things, in one way - then at other times they need to say other things in another way. We cannot fit everything we want to do into a single online persona - so, as we get more adept at managing our online profiles, we are increasingly deciding to maintain more than one.

What does this mean to marketers?

As marketers, the more we understand the behaviour of our audience, the better we can engage with them and, ultimately, do business with them. I have gone into the implications of the this split-personality principle in the Social Media Jekyll & Hyde whitepaper.

It shows the different personas that people use in different places and suggests how we might adapt our communications to cater for these personalities - even though they are the same person.

And of course social media is still in its infancy. Online users will become more sophisticated, and as they do, they can give fuller vent to their real inner selves, which will in turn give marketers like us extra problems. But of course, for those who do it right, a problem is no more than an opportunity to move ahead of the competition...


Read more in the whitepaper here: The Social Media Jekyll & Hyde Principle2.pdf