Are female NFL fans more socially active online?

I've been working on a project recently for a large sports sponsor who has for years been leveraging a league-side sponsorship to reach men. Now they wonder if they can leverage social media to reach and engage female fans as well. If they can do this, they will generate more value from the same sponsorship deal. So let's see what we can discover about female fans online...

We know that 33% of AVID NFL fans are women, but how do we know whether or not female fans will engage with our sponsor through social media?

I've been reading the book, Groundswell, Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Benoff. These authors come out of Forrester Research. (If you're looking for a framework to use in explaining (or selling) social media concepts, I recommend this book).

I'm using some of the concepts from this book to address the question at hand. This blog post will offer a summary of my initial findings, but before I get to that, there are two key terms introduced in the book which you need to be understand in order to track with me.

1. Groundswell - a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations

I really like this definition. In fact, I applaud the authors for emphasizing that social media is MOSTLY about people connecting with people, and LESS about technology. This is a critical distinction. The authors point out that applications that connect people will be more successful than applications that don't. This is a pillar philosophy in our work at the Colts.

2. Social Technographics Profile - This term was invented by the authors. Basically, they're saying that different people use social media in different ways. Some are creators, some are critics, some are joiners...and some are inactive. Different factors affect behavior. Age matters. Gender matters. Personal passion matters. If you understand the social technographic profile of your customers and prospects, it will help you develop a strategy to leverage social media to engage that group.

Basically, the authors have invented another prism through which we can segment audiences. We already know about demographics and psychographics...now we've got social technographics. OK, I get it. Different people use social media differently. But which people? And what differences? Here's where the authors introduce a model, which they call the Social Technographics Ladder.

Social Technographic Ladder - Here is how the average online population breaks down in terms of social technographics. Each step in the ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. To join the group on a step, a consumer need only participate in one of the listed activities at least monthly.


For a cleaner view of this graphic
Groundswell blog shows latest breakdowns: Inactives -- people untouched by social technologies -- have shriveled from 44% down to 25% of the online population. Spectators -- those who read, watch, or consumer social content -- have ballooned from 48% to 69%. If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence.
...The authors provide a neat little application that lets you look at various age / gender breakdowns. View application here

So what is the social technographic profile of AVID FEMALE NFL fans?

The only data I have access to that might help me answer this question comes from my work with the Indianapolis Colts and its online fan community, MyColts.Net. This community of fans is just over a year old and has over 25,000 members, 66% male, 33% female. This gender breakdown mirrors exactly the profile of AVID NFL fans, so let's assume that we've got a pure community of online AVIDs.

Are female AVID fans different that male AVID fans in terms of social technographics?

If the only data I had was membership in the community, I could not begin to answer this question. I need a way to see what men and women are actually doing inside the community. Unlike Forrester which I assume got its data from surveys, I actually have some behavioral data which leads me to believe there are some significant differences. Here's why...

Inside MyColts we have a reputation management system we call "Colts Cred". Members earn Cred Points for each post the create. They do not earn points for reading. The system tracks posting behavior, so in theory, the people with the most CRED are most likely to be higher up on the social technographics ladder.

When we sorted our members by gender, and compared them by how much Cred they have, we found across the board that women had more cred. A LOT more Cred. In fact, despite the fact that women represent only 33% of the community, female members generated 55% of the Cred points.

This chart shows the COLTS CRED breakdown by age and gender.
Pink for women, blue for men...(I know, so cliche)

Inside every age segment except 55+, women, despite representing only 1/3 of people in the community, generate more cred points than men. This seems to be a clear indication that men and women use this social medium in different ways, and it seems to me an indication that AVID Female NFL fans could very well be reached and engaged through social media.

Here's an overall look at the same datal, female Colts fans (pink) generate 10% more CRED


Another interesting observation we made during this analysis is that the heaviest users of MyColts.Net are found in the 25-44 age group. This is interesting because it is very different than the national averages shown in the Groundswell book and a further indication that social technographic profiles are very much influenced by a person's passions.

But all of this is merely step one in a complex process. Now that we've found some evidence that AVID females can be engaged through social media, in this case the online community of one team, the question becomes: what do we actually DO with this information? It's one thing understanding that Women are from Venus, and another thing to use that knowledge to help our sponsor sell more products and services to female fans through our online community. In fact, the first thing we need to do is convince the sponsor to actually TRY something, which may prove our toughest challenge of all.

Still, whether it's this sponsor or some other, I expect we'll be implementing some test campaigns in the near future to begin figuring this out. In the meantime, I am open to any suggestions you might have.