Everybody and their mom is on Facebook
We'll spare you our own traumatic anecdotes of the monumentally bone-chilling, clammy-hand-inducing moment that we discovered our mother had joined Facebook and successfully posted a message on our Wall using her favorite pet name for us. Needless to say, we know for a fact that Internet users "of a certain age" are flocking to social media sites. And even though we hate that everyone now calls us 'Stinky-Winky-Monkey-Muffin,' it's important for all players involved in the digital marketing game to acknowledge and engage this demographic - especially when it comes to businesses aimed at that 50+ crowd.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always seem to be the case. Plenty of companies out there either (i) avoid social media marketing because they don't think their target market (those age 50 and up) uses the sites regularly or (ii) leverage social media to market their business, but totally ignores Boomers and the like. That's a shame for many reasons, not the least of which being that this group also frequently falls into the "affluent" category - a valuable audience, to be sure.
But the Pew Internet and American Life Project published a survey last week that makes a case for the attention of older Web users. The survey revealed that almost half of Internet users age 50-64 and more than one in four users 65+ use at least one social networking site. Evidently, Twitter is especially experiencing a Boomer boom, with a year-over-year jump from 5 percent to 11 percent.
But as you might have predicted, they're not exactly the ones fervently tweeting about Justin Bieber. Pew found that older adults use social media to reunite with people from their past, access support for chronic diseases and connect with members of younger generations.
Yes, contrary to the curmudgeonly stereotype some of us see passed around on sitcoms, older adults are embracing the opportunity to intermingle with a younger crowd. As the survey reports, "these social spaces pool together users from very different parts of people's lives and - here's our favorite part, and the very reason why we're excited about this phenomenon - provide the opportunity to share skills across generational divides."
Unfortunately, that doesn't always seem to be the case. Plenty of companies out there either (i) avoid social media marketing because they don't think their target market (those age 50 and up) uses the sites regularly or (ii) leverage social media to market their business, but totally ignores Boomers and the like. That's a shame for many reasons, not the least of which being that this group also frequently falls into the "affluent" category - a valuable audience, to be sure.
But the Pew Internet and American Life Project published a survey last week that makes a case for the attention of older Web users. The survey revealed that almost half of Internet users age 50-64 and more than one in four users 65+ use at least one social networking site. Evidently, Twitter is especially experiencing a Boomer boom, with a year-over-year jump from 5 percent to 11 percent.
But as you might have predicted, they're not exactly the ones fervently tweeting about Justin Bieber. Pew found that older adults use social media to reunite with people from their past, access support for chronic diseases and connect with members of younger generations.
Yes, contrary to the curmudgeonly stereotype some of us see passed around on sitcoms, older adults are embracing the opportunity to intermingle with a younger crowd. As the survey reports, "these social spaces pool together users from very different parts of people's lives and - here's our favorite part, and the very reason why we're excited about this phenomenon - provide the opportunity to share skills across generational divides."
