Personality vs Content – fighting inactivity on the internet

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Powerful name, powerful idea, even more powerful messages inside. About 2 weeks ago, I mentioned that I would be reading Groundswell. I am slowly working my way through the book and wanted to share some thoughts on a section that caught my attention. On page 44 of Groundswell (for those of you who have the book), you can see a chart that looks like this (for those who don’t have it):

(click to enlarge)

The focus for this article is the last column – the 44% of people that are inactive on the Internet. Inactive doesn’t mean that they are not on the Internet but that while on there, they do not have anything to do with the groundswell (or “the spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect”). These are people who go online to shop, check their email, maybe read a story or 2, but their involvement in the Internet is minimal at best, and benefits no one but themselves.

The question that I pose – and that we can discuss in the comments – is how do we take an inactive Internet user and turn them into one of the other 5 types listed above?

I’ll get the discussion started. I believe that the inactive users need to be divided into two categories – inactive because of personality and inactive because of an unknown reason.

Let’s look at the first group: Inactive because of personality. There is a certain percentage of Internet users that you could stand on your head, offer them free cars for using social media and they still wouldn’t become involved. They just don’t care. Let me repeat – they just don’t care. As much as we all hate to think that there are people like this, I know of one personally. My mother. She has used the Internet for business for the last 15 years, but would be considered an inactive user because she has never touched a social network, doesn’t read blogs, stay away from forums and ignores the fact that there is anyone else on the Internet. This isn’t for lack of understanding. In fact she understands blogging and social media very well – she just doesn’t want anything to do with it.

The second group: Inactive for some unknown reason. This group is harder to understand because we have a large variable. Although some people may have similar reasons for inactivity, many of them won’t actually know why they are inactive, therefore making it extremely difficult to help them to become active. The most important fact about this group is they are often wary of interaction. Which means one false move or bad comment towards them, and they could be scared off of social media forever. So, if we are going to make them active, we need to do it slowly and in a way that they can be protected until they are more comfortable.

Share your thoughts to the question in comments and let’s see what we can figure out together.

And if you haven’t, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Groundswell. Only 50 pages in and it has already become one of my new favorites.

Related posts:

1. I’m a pretty big deal on the internet
2. Multiple Personality Disorder
3. 7 ways I keep myself excited about my content