Facebook Isn’t For Your Kids Anymore

I was reading a new social networking report from Nielsen called Global Faces and Networked Places and they had some stats about the growth of Facebook over the past year.

At Brandswag we deal with the Facebook paradigm from the older generations. Many of the small business owners we talk to would rather not think about using Facebook for marketing or networking because it is something their kids use. Now, we know that is not entirely true and yes… Facebook is used by your children but there is more behind .

The past few years have seen an increase in the use of Facebook by the Gen X and Baby Boomer crowd. According to the Nielsen report the greatest growth on Facebook has been from the people aged 35-49.

Guess what age group doubled that of their 18 year old children? The 50-64 year olds.

We are talking about one-third of the global audience on Facebook being between the ages of 35-49! What does this mean for small business owners? It means that you now have a viable source for business networking. It means that social media is no longer all about your children.

This small piece of your marketing strategy is now catering to all age groups… young and old. Is it time to start using social media to grow your business? Is it time to at least learn how to communicate online?

Absolutely. Start now.

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The Generation Y Disconnect on Social Media

(Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a characterization of generations… just something I have noticed around the past few months)

I gave a lecture to a couple of classes at Purdue University last week about Social Media. You know… everything they could possible want to know. It was an introduction to the power of social media marketingfor small business in the present and future. I noticed something that was fairly surprising to me as a Generation Y social media user. The majority (and when I say majority I mean 99%) of the students used nothing but Facebook. I am talking about nothing. No Myspace. No Twitter. No StumbleUpon. No LinkedIN. They all used Facebook.

Many would think that the majority of Generation Y (or millenials) would be using all forms of social media they could get their hands on.. apparently not so. This also applies to my friends. The only platform the majority of my friends use is Facebook. Why is that?

The light finally dawned when I read a post by David Armano explaining the evolution of social media from SOCIAL to NETWORKING. There is a disconnect between college students using other tools because frankly… they THINK they shouldn’t need to. Think again.

There needs to be a huge push in higher education towards social media education. Graduates should be taught how to use LinkedIN and Twitter to job search. They should be told about sites like Brazen Careerist and Careerscribe and NOT about Monster and CareerBuilder.

Education needs to shift HARD to new tools and not to whether your resume should be copy and pasted into the email or saved as an attachtment. Give me a break.

I worry that the new work force is not being taught to utilize the world of social media for networking and link building.

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