An insider’s guide to using social media to reach Boomer women

I recently moderated what turned out to be a fantastic panel on “Using Social Media to Build your Boomer Business” at Mary Furlong’s What’s Next Boomer Business Summit. It was fantastic because the panelists were so smart, and as a moderator I got to learn so much from them.

One of the smartest was Lori Bitter from the Boomer-oriented agency Continuum Crew, and I’m going to share (a nice word for “steal”) a terrific tool she shared with us for understanding and evaluating social media sites. The tool is a chart called at The CMO’s Guide to The Social Landscape from CMO.com.
The CMO.com guide evaluates social media tools based on their success in fulfilling 4 goals: customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and SEO (search engine optimization, or encouraging Google and other search engines to lead people to you).

As the creator of a social network of smart, successful women 50+, and a business that itself engages Boomers with social media, I can say that the CMO.com analysis is right on.

Let’s take the largest platforms first.

Facebook ranks high for exposing your brand and communicating with customers. So does Twitter. While they can share these results, the two sites do so in very different ways.

When used properly, Twitter is very good for passing on links and getting people to click on them. Facebook is not very good for this purpose, since Facebook users tend to keep their conversations on Facebook and not leave the site.

Twitter is also better than Facebook for individuals like consultants or independent contractors who want to promote their own businesses, and it is better for companies in the “b-to-b” space, meaning that they are promoting themselves to other businesses (rather than directly to consumers).

Because Boomer women are on Facebook (with almost 11 million self-identified U.S. women 50+), it is the place where they have learned to be comfortable with social networking and a place where it is easy to get them talking about any topic or brand.

Among Boomers, we find that Twitter is full of the self-employed. At its worst, it can seem like a bunch of Boomer consultants talking to each other. At its best, it lets consultants find clients and gives the self-employed an efficient venue for promoting their name. If your business depends on communicating with Boomer consumers, Twitter and Facebook need to be a part of your toolkit.

As for other tools, you should examine the CMO.com list yourself. But here are a few highlights:

• LinkedIn: good for personal branding and for recruiting. (Remember that Boomer women make great recruits.)
• YouTube: A must-have if your business has any video content at all – a great way to generate awareness and links back to your own site.
• Digg, StumbleUpon, and De.licio.us: Each is a little different, but each of these can be important source of visitors to your content or site.

The most important lesson about social media is learning what tools not to use, because each tool requires a lot of time to be successful. The CMO.com guide also indicates which social media formats are probably not worth your time.

One advantage of marketing to Boomer Women is that they don’t tend to be early adopters of new social media. They do adopt it, but generally after you’ve had some time to learn how to use it most effectively.

In other words, there’s no reason to be the first one to use any social media format to reach Boomers; but there’s no excuse to use it sloppily, either.