Baby Boomers and Social Media

Is your ser­vice busi­ness using Social Media yet? Or are you still won­der­ing if it is worth the effort to blog, post, tweet and con­nect online? Many high-end ser­vice con­trac­tors work pri­mar­i­ly for the Baby Boomer gen­er­a­tion. These con­sumers can typ­i­cal­ly afford to have their hous­es paint­ed, geot­her­mal units installed or large cus­tom kitchens remod­eled. How­ev­er, many con­trac­tors won­der if their Baby Boomer clien­tele spends much time online, espe­cial­ly on the Social Media net­works. They pose a good ques­tion, ​“Should our com­pa­ny invest the time it takes to be online when many of our cus­tomers don’t even know how to use Social Media?  Read­ers vs. Contributors The next time you jump on a train, wait for your a flight or spend time in a sit­ting lounge, take a look around: How many peo­ple between the ages of 50 and 65 (and even old­er) are using iPhones, iPads and oth­er techie gad­gets? It often out­num­bers the younger users with expen­sive toys. My par­ents, who are in their six­ties, recent­ly pur­chased a cou­ple of Apples iTouch­es and an iPad, and I am amazed at how quick­ly they are learn­ing to use these devices. My mom even knows how to Face­time, and my dad is con­sid­er­ing toss­ing his ​“old” Black­ber­ry for the new iPhone! And among their peers, my par­ents are not alone. I spoke recent­ly with some­one in a Baby Boomer ad agency and he gave me good insight into the cur­rent net usage trends: Boomers con­nect with the online world start­ing just as read­ers. In oth­er words, they get on Face­book and sub­scribe to blogs and read the mate­r­i­al that inter­ests them, but they typ­i­cal­ly do not spend a lot of time con­tribut­ing. The con­trib­u­tors tend to be the young gen­er­a­tion at this point. As busi­ness own­ers using Social Media, we want feed­back. We want con­trib­u­tors so that we know we are on the right track. How­ev­er, get­ting Baby Boomers to write a review, leave a com­ment or share our online infor­ma­tion may not be a real­i­ty at this stage. On an encour­ag­ing note, I spoke with a major con­trib­u­tor of Amazon.com’s prod­uct reviews, (in her mid 40’s) who said most of the peo­ple buy­ing from Ama­zon and leav­ing reviews are between 40 and 65. I believe this is because Ama­zon made reviews what they are today and has had long-term clients who learned how to write a review. Once they learned how easy it was, they start­ed doing it. It is just a mat­ter of time before these same peo­ple will branch out and become more active on the oth­er ​“social” sites. Don’t be Discouraged So if the Baby Boomers read more than they con­tribute at this point, what should a con­trac­tor do? Don’t get dis­cour­aged, but embrace Social Media mar­ket­ing. The fastest grow­ing Social Media sub­group right now is the Baby Boomer audi­ence, and you have the advan­tage if you are pre­pared for them. The eas­i­er things are to use, the more you’ll see them get­ting involved, even if they do remain more read­ers than con­trib­u­tors. Hav­ing read­ers is fan­tas­tic! Hook them with your con­tent so they want to read more – keep writ­ing good blogs, cre­at­ing good posts and tweets, and upload­ing pho­tos and videos. If you have them read­ing, it will often turn into a lead and hope­ful­ly a long-term client. Final­ly, make sure your web­site is mobile-friend­ly. Make your web­site ready for the Baby Boomers and mobile users. What do you think? If you are a Boomer read­ing this, how do you use Social Media? If you don’t want to com­ment below, hmmm…maybe call me up or send me an email. Side note: many of my clients don’t com­ment on my blogs or post much because they are in that same 40 – 65 age range… but now and then they’ll men­tion to me that they read and appre­ci­at­ed a par­tic­u­lar post.