Facebook and Twitter for Adults

Face­book: What´s the Big Deal? Six years ago, Har­vard sopho­more Mark Zucker­berg began Face­book — a web­site for Ivy League stu­dents to con­nect and inter­act online. Grad­u­al­ly, the site opened up to new groups of users until any­one over the age of 13 can have a pro­file. Now, the 1,400 employ­ee com­pa­ny boasts 500 mil­lion active users, and sud­den­ly ​“face­book­ing” and ​“friend­ing” are verbs! But the land­scape is chang­ing at the world´s largest social net­work­ing site: though youths are using face­book from their phones dur­ing class­es, church ser­vices, and while dri­ving, there are now more Face­book users over the age of 35 than under. In the age 65+ cat­e­go­ry, the num­ber of users has dou­bled in the last 12 months. Face­book is grow­ing up! So what does this mean for the future of Face­book, and for busi­ness­es? Two things are very likely: 

1. Face­book will begin tar­get­ing their site more towards busi­ness­es and adults, because that is where more mon­ey is found. They have already start­ed down this road by cre­at­ing Face­book Places: when­ev­er a Face­book user enters a loca­tion or busi­ness reg­is­terd as a Face­book Place, the user can instant­ly announce to all his or her friends where they are. Users can find friends while out on the town, and busi­ness­es get a free name-drop! Also, busi­ness ​“fan pages” are mul­ti­ply­ing rapid­ly, and new appli­ca­tions are being devel­oped that make com­pa­ny web­sites almost unnec­es­sary. Imag­ine your busi­ness fan page with the tabs of your choice: Cus­tomer Reviews, Port­fo­lios, Signup Forms, Sur­veys, and much more, all for free! As com­pa­nies sign up, Face­book will increase its ser­vices that cater to busi­ness­es and consumers.
2. For busi­ness and social rea­sons, adults are learn­ing the lan­guage and map­ping out the ter­rain of Face­book. As this trend grows, young users will begin look­ing for a new place where par­ents can´t mon­i­tor them so close­ly. I think it like­ly that the younger gen­er­a­tion will begin to drift away from Face­book and back towards tex­ting and instant mes­sag­ing until a new com­pa­ny comes along with a social site just for teens or col­lege students.

Who Gives a Tweet? I com­mon­ly hear the com­plaints, ​“Argh! I hate Twit­ter! It is so annoy­ing.” and ​“I just don´t get Twit­ter!” Yes, Twit­ter can be aggra­vat­ing, but the site has gained 100 mil­lion users in four years, and it´s not like­ly to dis­ap­pear. In fact, if you aren´t con­nect­ing with clients through Twit­ter, a com­peti­tor prob­a­bly is. Twit­ter is a site that lets users become ​“authors,” post­ing short mes­sages that are auto­mat­i­cal­ly dis­played to all of their ​“fol­low­ers.” Casu­al users use it to find out what their friends are think­ing and doing, as well as to post their own thoughts and doings. More strate­gic users, such as politi­cians, non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, and busi­ness­es, use Twit­ter to grow a list of fol­low­ers who enjoy read­ing their short updates. Let´s look at a Hol­ly­wood exam­ple: The actor Ash­ton Kutch­er cur­rent­ly has 5.7 mil­lion fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, and a sim­i­lar amount on Face­book. These fans read his updates to feel con­nect­ed, and to ​“know the inside sto­ry.” Now imag­ine Kutch­er is in a new movie, and it´s not one he´s real­ly proud of — it´s a bit of a flop. If he men­tions the movie on Twit­ter, even if only half of the peo­ple who read the post go to the movie, at $10 per tick­et, it would make at least $28 mil­lion! On top of that, his Face­book users are an eager audi­ence to his sub­tle adver­tise­ment, and any of these fol­low­ers and fans might also end up bring­ing a date along! Clear­ly, the busi­ness poten­tial is there. It´s easy to look at those num­bers and be dis­cour­aged, but you don´t need to be rich, famous, and hand­some to make Twit­ter prof­itable. Research shows that 64% of Twit­ter users are over age 35, and the medi­an user age is 39. With so many users out there, many of them would be inter­est­ed in your busi­ness. Even if you just have five fol­low­ers, that´s OK — just make those five fol­low­ers love you! They´ll tell five of their friends about you, and you´ll be up to 25, and so it goes. Share expert tips, inter­est­ing arti­cles, news updates, trends in your field, and any­thing new hap­pen­ing in your busi­ness. Many fol­low­ers look at Twit­ter the same way peo­ple scan the High­light sec­tion on the front page of the Wall Street Jour­nal. It gives a quick overview of the main con­tent in the paper, and if some­thing catch­es your eye, you open to it. An inter­est­ing Twit­ter post will draw vis­its to your site in the same way. What now? You don´t have to love Face­book, Twit­ter, Linkedin, or whatever´s next, but you do have to know that these social net­work­ing sites are grow­ing, and many of your cus­tomers are on them. Put away your shield and dag­ger, and ask your clients what they do online. Many clients are embar­rassed to admit just how much time they spend on those sites — espe­cial­ly on Face­book. Some of your cus­tomers use Face­book reli­gious­ly (some even in church!), while oth­ers hate it. Oth­ers are using Linkedin and still more vis­it Ama​zon​.com, Wall Street Jour­nal, New York Times, a com­mu­ni­ty forum or even Grand​par​ents​.com to stay con­nect­ed and research pur­chas­es. Once you find out how your clients are using social media sites, you can plan and bud­get the strat­e­gy you need to reach them.