LinkedIn « Mature Marketing Matters

Posts Tagged ‘LinkedIn’

Facebook, Internet Users More Similar to Offline Population Ages Than Ever

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

With all the excitement over the Facebook IPO, Heather Dougherty at Experian Hitwise today rounded up 10 stats about the social network that are key to understanding its reach and impact. We focused in on Stat #5 – a demographic breakdown of Facebook users, which include 19% younger Baby Boomers aged 49-54 and 20% older Boomers or seniors aged 55+.

The chart (below) shows the visit share by age for the big four social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. And the age breakdown of the (US?) online population.

As eMarketer has noted, “The average age of Internet users is rising in tandem with that of the general population.” It appears so far Facebook is the online social network that most closely mirrors the age diversity of our offline world. Twitter continues to appeal to GenX and GenY. And LinkedIn continues to be an excellent if underappreciated network for reaching 55+ adults – 57% of users are baby boomers or beyond!

I was surprised to see Google+ have a larger audience over the age of 55 than Twitter, but on second thought its design and functionality is so similar to Facebook, it might feel more comfortable to older users.

Stat #8 wasn’t a surprise to us. As Dougherty writes, “Facebook” is the most searched term in the US and Facebook-related terms account for 14% of the top search clicks.” We shared that insight with a team of social media marketing ambassadors from a leading continuing care retirement community just two days ago. It was terrific to see their excitement for how the network could promote deeper relationships with their senior prospects and adult children.

If your organization needs help turning social media stats into social media strategies, please check out these related posts (or give us a call – we’d love to help).

Tags: Facebook, Google+, HitWise, LinkedIn, twitter
Posted in 40+, 50+, 60+, Boomers, Gen X, Internet, Marketing, Silent Generation, Social Networking, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Gaining Boomer and Senior Marketing Insights from Social Media

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Using social media as part of your marketing program? Most likely you are. May 2011 research from Brian Solis revealed that two-thirds of marketers are conducting social media advertising activities. More and more retirement communities and other organizations targeting baby boomers and seniors are jumping on the social media bandwagon each day.

What doesn’t seem to vary is the struggle to act on or measure what your brand gains from social media. As eMarketer notes:

From the early days of the internet, the prospect of detailed metrics fueled the promise that online advertising could yield unprecedented insights about customer preferences and behavior. That promise has only partially materialized. True, online channels provide feedback that offline media cannot, but marketers are still grappling with how to make this input work toward the bottom line.

From my presentation to the International Council on Active Aging (ICAA) last week, here are tools and tips that can help marketers spot and make sense of customer preferences and behavior.

We’ve focused on resources that are built-in or free, and are accessible to organizations like our clients – continuing care retirement communities, estate planners and 50+ housing developers with a lot of heart but little budgets.

Free Social Media Tools You Should Be Using

1. FACEBOOK:

* Facebook Insights: built-in and free, this tool helps you analyze your brand’s page metrics.

- Find out which messages hit (and which miss) their mature marks through “people talking about” and noting which posts attract the most engagement.

- Demographics and locations reported by Facebook also offer (free) insights. We discovered one client’s site was attracting more adult children than prospects themselves. And for another, we found that Friends were quirkier than we thought – one report showed a healthy portion of fans used Facebook with the language set to Pirate. Now our posts contain more humor and get more engagement than before.

* Facebook search: type your brand name into the search bar and then, on the results page, click on Public Posts. As Search Engine Journal put it, “what you’re left with is real time results for wall posts from all (public) profiles or pages on Facebook!”

2. TWITTER:

* TwitterCounter: track follower growth – yours or a competitor’s – for free on a weekly or monthly basis. Upgrade and you can see who is retweeting or sharing your tweets.

* Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Argyle Social, TweetAdder and Co-Tweet are tools for managing your Twitter account. All offer varying degrees of monitoring as well. Our personal favorite is HootSuite. You can track clicks and shares, and set up searches for key phrases (your brand name, your brand plus words such as LIKE, LOVE or HATE). Reports can even be exported and shared, a time-saving feature for smaller organizations.

* Twilert: Baby boomer blogger Linda Bernstein swears by this service, which delivers a regular email update with tweets containing keywords related to your brand, product or service.

3. LINKEDIN:

* Company page Analytics: see at a glance the interest your brand is generating and what kind of traffic, segmented by industry or other selects.

* Group Statistics: visualize your group members by seniority, function, location and industry.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING:

* There are a number of paid social media monitoring services out there, including Trackur, Radian6, sysomos, Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Alterian. You might first want to read a few comparisons (like this one from FreshMinds) to see what the strengths of each system is.

* A FREE and easy tool is Social Mention: Per MarketingSherpa’s Adam Sutton,

“… more than 80% of marketers say measuring brand sentiment is important, yet fewer than half actually track it. You can start gauging sentiment today by spending two minutes playing with Social Mention.

This fantastically simple and free tool provides a stunning amount of data, including a sentiment analysis of your online mentions. You can even click “positive” and “negative” to see a list of results used to generate your score. How cool is that?”

Very cool indeed.

What tool do you feel is cool for marketers focused on baby boomers and seniors? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

*Part 1: Following the True Leaders: Your Boomer and Senior Customers

* 41 Percent of Americans are on Facebook (and 98% have at least one TV set)

* Social Networking Habits of Baby Boomers and Beyond

Tags: analytics, Brian Solis, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing Sherpa, Search Engine Journal, social media monitoring, twitter
Posted in 50+, 60+, Boomers, Internet, Marketing, Mature Consumers, Silent Generation, Social Networking | 2 Comments »

AARP: Boomers, Seniors Growing More Comfortable and Involved with Social Networking, Tech

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

AARP has released new research into the social networking/social media and technology use of Baby Boomers and 65+ seniors. The upshot: Americans over 50 are definitely not technophobic. And, social networking is on the rise, with 27% of Boomers/seniors using social media websites. Consistent with older consumers’ desires for connections offline, the report finds that they are most often connected to – and most often motivated to join social networks by – their family.

Highlights from AARP’s Social Media Research

* 47% of Boomers and seniors originally heard about social networking from a family member other than their spouse.

* 70 percent of 50+ers first heard about social media from a child or grandchild.

* 24% of Boomers and seniors who are active in social networks were introduced to it by friends.

* Women were more likely than men to be introduced by family members (60% to 29%).

* Among adults 50+ who use social media websites, 73 percent are connected to relatives other than children and grandchildren. 62% are connected to their children. 36 percent are connected to grandchildren.

* Facebook was most popular among AARP’s respondents – 23% of their 50+ social networkers used this site. LinkedIn was #3, with 4% and Twitter clocked in at #4, with 3% of respondents using or visiting the microblogging service. Interestingly (and most likely driven by grandchildren) 4% had MySpace accounts.

We note that 73% of the 1360 older adults contacted reported they do not use social networks at all.

For tips and more insights about social media marketing and Boomers and seniors, here are some related articles:

- The Age of Social Networks? Mature
- From Social Media Socialites to the Socially Awkward (why one size doesn’t fit all for marketing)
- Untangling the Web: Social Media and Boomer, Senior Homebuyers
- Marketing to Gen X and Baby boomers via LinkedIn
- The Face(book) in the Mirror is Getting Older

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Tags: AARP, Facebook, LinkedIn, research, Social Networking
Posted in 50+, Internet, Social Networking, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Age of Social Networks? Mature

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

“In social media, not only do women rule, but it seems that the middle-aged are Social Media’s largest share holders,” writes Brian Solis in a new blog post. Solis shares new data from a Pingdom study of 19 social networks which found the age groups that dominate the social Web are 35-44 (Gen X, 58%), 17 and under (21%) and 45-45 (younger Baby Boomers, aka Gen Jones, 16%).

In the past, we’ve counseled those marketing to Boomers and beyond to go slowly and be choosy. Pingdom’s studycould help marketers make some of those choices. They found that the 35-44 age group “dominates the social media sphere,” representing 25% of the users across 19 sites. This age group is the largest segment on 11 of the 19 social media sites. Those 45-54 are tops on another 3 out of the 19 sites Pingdom reviewed.

Where will you find …

The average user of a social networking site is 37 years old, reports Pingdom. They then calculated an average age for each of the sites they studied.

* Looking for Millennials? Try Bebo – average age 28.4. MySpace and Xanga are close behind.

* For the not-so-Silent Generation, you might have luck with Classmates – 8% are over 65, making Classmates the site with the largest share of this mature cohort.

* Does (Gen) X mark the marketing spot for your organization? 61% of Facebook users, and 64% of Twitter-ers are over 35.

* We were surprised to discover 20% of Friendster users are between the ages of 45 and 54, which makes them trailing edge Baby Boomers (also known as Generation Jones).

* And LinkedIn, as we’ve noted before, appears your best bet for Boomers in general. Average age is 44.3 years old. That’s up three years since we shared our thoughts on LinkedIn as a mature marketing vehicle in September of 2009. More than 35% of are between 45 and 64 years old.

Be sure to read Pingdom’s post for a chart with the average ages for each of the 19 sites under review. Useful information for those preparing their social media marketing strategies.

P.S. Creating Results has been conducting research into the attitudes of 40+ consumers towards social media. We recently opened up our survey to a national audience, putting a 3-minute poll online. Whether you love or hate social networking, we’d love to hear from you! Follow this link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/233384/40-plus-social-media

Tags: Brian Solis, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pingdom, twitter
Posted in 40+, Boomers, Gen X, Generation Jones (trailing edge Boomers), Marketing, Mature Consumers, Millennials/Gen Y, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Mature, Affluent, Educated and LinkedIn

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Part 4 of a series on using social media for marketing to Baby Boomers and beyond.

PART 4: FIVE WAYS LINKEDIN CAN HELP YOU REACH 40+ PROFESSIONALS

Where can you be virtually guaranteed to find affluent, educated and mature consumers online? Try LinkedIn. For companies targeting younger matures (the tip of Gen X, Gen Jones/trailing edge Baby Boomers and those in between), the fourth most popular social networking site offers several marketing opportunities.

LinkedIn describes their average user as a male, 41 years old, with an annual household income of roughly $109,000.

As blogger Steve Schultz put it, “This is clearly the result of the nature of the website and its purpose.”

If your purpose is to influence 40+ matures, including Gen X and trailing edge Baby Boomers, here are five ways LinkedIn could help:

• Web site traffic and brand exposure. Searchers of all ages can find you on LinkedIn, then move to a corporate site.

• Trust. It’s a critical factor in a mature consumer’s decision to purchase. You can build trust by providing easy access to background information on company executives. Seniors will spot a phony a mile away; a public profile on LinkedIn can help show you’re the real deal.

• Advertising. (And no, we don’t make commissions.) Those using LinkedIn to make connections in their professional lives are also consumers. They are open to services that make their personal lives easier. And most companies don’t block access to LinkedIn during the day as they might Facebook or other social networking sites. The service offers advertising options for budgets “large” or “small.”

• Referrals. In 2007, eMarketer reported that “nearly all (89%) of Baby Boomers who were asked for advice gave it to their friends, or fellow boomers. And nearly all boomers (93%) say that they consider their friends (also boomers) to be trusted sources of information.” 45% of Boomer recommendations were made online, and LinkedIn features many tools to encourage this type of word-of-mouth.

• Matchmaking. With LinkedIn, you can even find nationally-recognized generational marketing agencies to help you reach your goals with Baby Boomers and beyond.

Share your thoughts: will LinkedIn play a part in your mature marketing efforts?

- Part 3, Facebook offers marketing opportunities with Baby Boomers and Seniors

- Next week, Boomer-targeted niche sites – “online ghettoes” or a marketing opportunity?

Tags: Gen X, Generation Jones, LinkedIn, social media, social networks
Posted in 40+, Boomers, Gen X, Generation Jones (trailing edge Boomers), Internet, Marketing, Mature Consumers, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Social Media and Marketing to Boomers, Seniors

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Curious about the role social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can play in your Boomer marketing programs? When deciding where to budget your dollars and effort to reach mature consumers, consider the research/statistics. Also, consider the similarities between the offline and online behavior of Baby Boomers and beyond.

“Businesses and mature consumers often approach challenges and decision-making in a similar fashion – cautiously,” we wrote in our summer newsletter. As Creating Results works with clients on comprehensive internet marketing strategies, we recommend acting like the Boomers and Silent Generation members we target: go slowly and be choosy.

Over the next few posts, we’ll be sharing stats on how Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or niche sites are used by mature (40+) consumers, along with some generational marketing insights to help your organization reach its goals.

PART 1: SOCIAL NETWORKING USE BY GENERATION

eMarketer statistics identify which social networking sites are used by Baby Boomers, WWII, and Generations X, Y and Z:

(Where are the Silents? Anderson Analytics either lumped the roughly 59 million people born between 1925 and 1942 in with the WWII generation or this cohort is very, very quiet indeed.)

The reasons for joining a social network are quite similar across the generations, per eMarketer:

(more…)

Tags: baby boomers, Facebook, LinkedIn, online marketing, Silent Generation, social networks, twitter, WWII
Posted in 40+, 50+, 60+, Boomers, Marketing, Mature Consumers, Silent Generation, Social Networking, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

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