No, this post isn’t about the song played at every wedding this year from Beyoncé. (Although this clip from SNL puts a smile on my face every. single. time.)

Denis Pombriant wrote a great piece earlier this month for CRM Buyer based on new research from Pingdom indicating that most social networking and social media sites are frequented by more women than men. As a woman, I don’t find this all that shocking. Not only do I have more female “friends” on-line, but based on the actual interactions from these friends on social networking sites, it’s clear who the social sex is. I had to set up my own husband’s Facebook page just to get him to join! But I digress…

What I did find interesting (and Denis does, too) is what the data doesn’t illustrate. He says, “Think about the skill set that we prize in sales and marketing people. How does that skill set align with the people in the social strata?”

So what does that mean for those of us trying to reach out to consumers? In PR in 2009, we have been telling our clients to jump on social networking sites and get involved. But given this new data, we must take it a step further and explore whether or not we are missing a large portion of the population who aren’t on these social networking sites.  And those that are on the sites, well, we need to ensure our message is clear to the audience.

As we close out another year and look to what will work in the PR industry in 2010, the discussion will continue – how do we bridge the on-line vs. off-line gap. And the age-old question, how do we bridge the gender gap?

I welcome your comments.

Written by Tory Klaubo Patrick