If you are anywhere online these days knowing who you serve is important to your bottom line. Forrest Research has published a book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies that helps you do just that. The book’s key message is that it helps you better understand how social technologies like YouTube, Twitter and blogging impact your business.

Forrester’s Social Technographics® classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation

The six participant types are the following:

• Creators – responsible for generating content on the web. They blog, tweet and create YouTube videos
• Critics – respond to what others post. They review products and services.
• Collectors – organizers of content for themselves and others. They might use sites like digg.com, RSS, tags, etc.
• Joiners – have profiles on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
• Spectators – don’t actively participate in the conversation but read blogs. Listen to podcasts. Read product reviews.
• Inactives – ignore it all! online interaction just isn’t their thing.

These profiles are important to note to make sure your message is getting heard. If the clients I wanted to serve for example didn’t actively use Facebook then setting up a Facebook fan page would not be a good strategy for my business. An email newsletter would probably be better to get my message to the right people.

Check out the tool below to create a consumer profile and to see if your strategy aligns with the research.