October: changing leaves, carving pumpkins, discovering you’re half-way through the bag of candy you bought for Halloween … Time to drop the peanut butter cup and read on for the top mature marketing links for the first week of this new month.
1. MOST SHARED: The “Ten Commandments for Social Media Failure.” Want to avoid socnet #failures? Take a look at the the ten ways marketers guarantee such problems, as described by Tania Yuki of Shareablee. Yuki’s excellent list ranges from treating social media marketing “as a magical ATM” to not measuring results to focusing on the number of followers/fans over more meaningful numbers such as conversions.
Here’s one sure-fire way to fail that we see all-too-frequently in 50+ marketing. As Yuki writes:
“Delegate social media only to the young — and then don’t support them
After all, if you can eat a pizza, you can make a pizza, so it makes sense to give social media over to the digital natives. Any one of them will do. They grew up on Facebook so they will know how to market your 100-year-old brand without any training, guidelines, or strategy. A no-rules policy inspires creativity and honesty, leading to gems like this.
And if you can’t hand social over to a Millennial, you can just make it someone’s second job and see what happens. How much time could social media require, anyway? It’s not like there’s over a billion people on it or anything.”
We’ve seen clients greatly improve results after investing in social media training for ALL team members, or at a minimum all leadership team members. Education leads to early buy-in, ongoing enthusiasm and more effective storytelling that drives to business goals.
Read the article in iMedia Connection: http://bit.ly/1n9KOz8
2. MOST CLICKED: This interactive chart shows traditional TV viewing is trending down for cohorts, but slightly up for baby boomers and seniors (seen in a gradual up-and-to-the-right slope). http://bit.ly/1vH0skZ
Source: TechCrunch
We included that chart in a post last week on TV viewing and older consumers. A related link also got a high number of click-throughs: it was to a November 2013 post with stats on the use of buzzed-about marketing channels such as Instagram and Snapchat (http://bit.ly/1mLbypj)
This led us to wonder if the age gap on Instagram was narrowing at all. Instagram’s user base has grown to about 200 million. (Compare to Pinterest at 70 million and Facebook at 1.37 billion registered users, per Craig Smith at Digital Marketing Ramblings.)
In March of 2014, eMarketer reported that 69% of Instagram users were between 18 and 44. They project that 200,000 65+ seniors will use the service this year vs. 20+ million 18-34 year olds. And by 2016, that number of senior uses will grow to 800,000 while the number of 18-34 year old users will grow to 24+ million.
So while Instagram shouldn’t be overlooked and the service does continue to grow, it wouldn’t be our first choice for marketing to baby boomers and seniors.
3. Also of note:
* Even though 53% of boomers plan to leave New York City on retirement, by 2035 1 in 5 residents will be over 65, via The Epoch Times: http://bit.ly/1yHdKU7
* 8 simple ways you can use old fashioned Marketing Tactics to build your email marketing list, by Lorraine Ball: http://bit.ly/1sZrzL7
(If we may be so bold to add a #9: check out this case study and call Creating Results.)
* Stats That Prove Content Marketing Increases Lead Generation, Sales, and ROI, via SmartBug Media: http://bit.ly/1EksdFZ