If you’re like me and a little overwhelmed by all the social media marketing oppotunities out there, an article I came across in Marketing News may help you figure out what’s the best use of your time because it talks about the 6 different profiles of social media participants.

Based on a new book called Groundswell, Forrester Research VP Josh Bernoff has found that people break down into the following categories:

• Creators, who write the blogs, upload video and music, and write and post articles–essentially creating alot of the content in the social media space.
• Critics, who reacting to content from others by commenting on blogs or in online forums, posting ratings or reviews, or editing wikis.
• Collectors, who organize the social content in by compiling content feeds (RSS), “tagging” content, and voting on sites like digg.com.
• Joiners are those people on social networks like Facebook and MySpace
• Spectators, who just read what’s out there
• Inactives, who don’t participate in social media at all.

Obviously, people can fall into more than one category, I know I do. But knowing what profiles suit your target audience, or looking at what you want your target audience to do, can help figure out which way to go. (Want to build your list, find the Joiners in your audience. Want more comments on your blog? Inspire the Critics through Twitter or whatnot) Of course, you still have to figure out how to get them to engage with you on that level.

I was particularly interested to see a blog post that profiled a group of Small Business Owners further down on the Groundswell blog. In general, they are more active than the typical Americans. And, not suprising, there were a high level of Creators and Critics. So which profiles are you?