Still Think Socmed’s A Fad?
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I’ve noted an interesting parallel in the reasons given by some who feel participating in social media is not worth the effort. Many of the reasons they give are the same given by some who I courted in the late 1990s as customers of my web design business:
- It’s just a fad
- Only “techies” are really into that kind of thing, not “real” people
- My customers wouldn’t get on that thing
- It’s a waste of my (time, money, attention …)
In their book “Trust Agents” (Amazon Affiliate Link) Chris Brogan and Julien Smith advise us not to look so much at the tools, but what the tools can be used for. Still, I would like to focus on some recently published statistics about just one social media tool to illustrate a point.
Check out this article from Business Insider, “Guess How Many People Log Into Facebook Each Day.” According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg 175 million people log into Facebook every day. I’m willing to bet there are not that many “techies” out there making up that number.
Stan Schroeder at Mashable cites some analysis done by iStrategyLabs in his article “Facebook Users Are Getting Older. Much Older” showing the largest two growth demographics for Facebook are 35-54 years of age (190.2%) and 55+ years of age (more than 513%!). It would not be wise to overlook this statistic.
I submit that there are “real” people who are part of that growth. Some are your customers. There is a pool of potential customers part of that growth as well. It is not a waste of your time or money to attempt to tap into the attention of those people.
Facebook may one day slip into disfavor much like what appears to be happening to MySpace. You may not “get” Twitter. Google’s Buzz may not mature into something widely used for many months. It doesn’t really matter, though. It’s not the tool that’s important – it’s what the tool is used for. You may use a certain wrench to fix something today, that doesn’t mean you won’t use a newer one later.
photo credit: emilykreed
I think that without a doubt social media is changing the landscape for advertisers. Twitter, facebook, blogs, video, etc is a way to speak to consumers and not just at them.
I’ve been reading “The Chaos Scenario” by Bob Garfield. He has some interesting ideas on the subject. You may want to check it out if you haven’t already.