Guest post by Lior Levin

The Baby Boomer generation remains a critically important demographic for marketers that can drive higher sales numbers if reached effectively. Marketing firm Coming of Age Incorporated clearly lays out the benefits of marketing to boomers: “At more than 100 million strong, baby boomer and older customers (born before 1965) are the single largest consumer group in America, and they are the wealthiest, best educated and most sophisticated of purchasers.”

In fact, Boomers have led the way even in some surprising markets. Ad Age reported in 2010 that Boomers were actually outspending younger consumers on technology products, to say nothing about their tendency to lead the charge in purchasing new cars and other big ticket items. When it comes to marketing to Baby Boomers, the rewards are tremendous, but tapping into this demographic is not without its challenges.

The Challenges of Marketing to Boomers
According to a 2009 study by Forrester Research Boomers are loyal to traditional and new media. A marketing mix is critical—sometimes using print and televised ads to drive online networking campaigns.

Having said that, Boomers’ usage of online networking is on the rise, even if they are setting their own trends. According to a recent eMarketer report, most activity is centered on Facebook—with 73% of Boomer users maintaining a profile as of 2009.

That number of Facebook users has climbed dramatically according to the 2010 Pew Internet Report:

The number of Facebook users in the U.S. aged 55 and older grew from around 1 million in early 2009 to 10 million in early 2010, according to istrategy.com, a website that tracks Facebook data.

Rather than turning to Twitter or LinkedIn, Boomers see social media as a chance to learn more about what their friends are doing. Facebook remains the most important online tool for reaching Boomers.

Referrals Are Important for Baby Boomers
You won’t find many Boomers willing to create web content, but they are willing to interact and to pay attention to what their networks value. In fact, their high usage of Facebook highlights the tendency of Boomers to make buying decisions based on what a trusted friend shares.

Jeremiah Owyang, when still at Forrester Research, wrote about Baby Boomers:

“more than 60% of them consume socially created content. You’ll also find Boomers leaving their opinions on Web sites and even joining social networks… We also recommend allowing Boomers to share their opinions with others by enabling comments, ratings, and rankings on Web sites.”

In touching on this trend, Mashable reports, “Tammy Gordon, director of social communications and strategy for AARP, says that she believes Boomers use the web a bit differently than younger consumers. ‘I don’t think a lot of Boomers type in ‘AARP Facebook,’ she says, ‘but if three of their friends ‘like’ it, they’ll check it out.’”

Boomers Avoid Association with Aging
Boomers highly value being treated differently from younger generations, but that doesn’t mean they want to be viewed as the “elders” of society. A recent eMarketer report suggested that “Boomers are immediately turned off by association of infirmity, old age and decline,” the report notes. “Most brands don’t want to ‘age’ their products with blatant appeals to older consumers.”

The New York Times also mentions, “‘The No. 1 rule is that you never call an older buyer old,’ said Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab. ‘And because many seniors rely on their kids for advice, it’s important to talk to the senior and the daughter who will likely make the purchase.’”

Boomers Refined, Individualized Tastes
As marketers consider how to reach Boomers, an emphasis on the needs of individuals who value independent thinking is critical. In fact, the mass-appeal ads targeted at younger generations simply don’t work for Boomers.

The New York Times reports, “‘Seniors, particularly baby boomers, each believe they belong to a market segment made up of exactly one person,’ said Blaine Branchik, an associate professor of marketing at Quinnipiac University who has studied the history of selling to the elderly. ‘Many believe the only thing they have in common is that they are all so unique that they have nothing in common.’”

Boomers Are Willing to Experiment
The over-50 demographic has been written off by many marketers because brand preferences are assumed to be set in place. However, Business Week reports that “today’s over-50 crowd is just as likely, and in some cases more likely, as everyone else to try different brands within a product category. According to Yankelovich Inc., 33% of consumers older than 50 agree that it’s ‘risky’ to buy an unfamiliar brand.”

Far from avoiding new choices, Boomers welcome opportunities to adopt new products that serve their needs and help them achieve the lifestyle they desire.

Baby Boomers represent a significant opportunity to grow your business and to expand the reach of your market. By recognizing the ways that Boomers make decisions and view marketing strategies, you’ll open up new opportunities for your business.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, marketing consultant for an inspection company that offers inspection pre-shipment services in China and, and who also consults for a company that provides psd to xhtml conversion.

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I’m flattered to be in another episode of Laurel Papworth‘s video series, Social Media Business.

This week there’s Laurel (of course), Tea Smith, Shel Israel and I, talking about six-year-olds receiving iPads at school, Pinterest, The “Almost There Generation” (not yet digital natives), and how to get a cracked iPhone replaced.

Tons of great information, and just for added value I’ve put the previous week’s video up too, with Stephen Johnson.

PANEL Facebook iPad, iPads in Edu SMB14 Feb 5 2012 from Laurel Papworth on Vimeo.

Social Media Business 13: Panel with Shel Israel from Laurel Papworth on Vimeo.

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Wherever you go online, you’re accustomed to using various apps and multimedia tools that help schedule events, perform tasks and communicate better with others. Companies that want to provide top customer support clearly need to study and implement these technologies into their own websites.

VeriShow, a real-time live help solution, has done just that, by combining live chat with an app-based platform that enables multimedia content sharing and live video feed. The service’s latest integration with LivePerson’s powerful online engagement solution makes it smarter and more flexible – for both live support and online sales purposes.

VeriShow’s main capabilities are:

• Audio and Video –  For escalating a text chat to a full video meeting when needed.
• Content sharing – Share product documents, images and videos.
• Form completion – use this app to show a form to a visitor, and help her sign and complete it online by appending an electronic signature.
• Live video feed – Plug in a second camera to display a product and highlight its features in real-time.
• Screen Sharing – share your screen or see your client’s screen, and assist her by co-browsing and controlling her computer remotely.
• Visitors’ doc app – an app which allows a client to upload a file from her own computer.
• Automatic Text Translator – This chat application makes communicating with clients that speak other languages an easy task, by automatically translating the chat into the chosen language.

By using the platform’s different app, businesses can provide personalized help in more efficient, interactive ways. If you are interested in adding a multimedia live chat to your customer support tools, you can try VeriShow for free. The service offers premium plans for business of all sizes.

Here’s a video about it:

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Duncan Riley (he of Techcrunch and The Inquisitr fame) has a new site – FortyTwoTimes.com

It’s a great site full of news and opinion and I wish him well in his new venture. He’s certainly got a great stable of writers to work with!

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I’m seeing more and more spam comments on my Google+ posts, so stumbling across this Chrome extension today was a Godsend.

I always use the Chrome browser from Google for my Google interactions, including Gmail and G+. This browser extension puts a ‘nuke’ button next to comments so you can dismiss this lickety-split. Brilliant!

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I know, I know… Thomas Dolby is nothing to do with business communication, but my musical hero is conducting a whistle-stop trip to Sydney and it’s the perfect opportunity for musos and Thomas-philes to recharge their musical batteries.

For those of you who may not know, Thomas first broke into the charts in the early 1980s and in the last few years has been the musical maestro at the TED conferences, playing with the great and the good of the musical world.

His latest album, A Map of the Floating City, is a masterpiece and no doubt Thomas will tease us with a snippet or two from it when he appears in Sydney:

Monday February 13th — Notes, Sydney — A personal conversation with Fairlight CMI inventor Peter Vogel : Buy Tickets

Tuesday February 14th — Notes, Sydney — A solo performance with songs and storytelling : Buy tickets

Alas, I can’t be there (damn!!!!) but can’t wait for Thomas to bring his full band over and rock somewhere here in Adelaide.

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I am advised by a contact that without attracting too much publicity, LinkedIn has updated their privacy conditions. Without any user intervention, LinkedIn is now permitted to use your name and picture in any of their advertisements.

Actions you might want to consider:
1. Place the cursor on your name at the top right corner of the screen.
From the small pull down menu that appears, select "settings"
2. Then click "Account" on the left/bottom
3. In the column next to Account, select the option "Manage Social Advertising"
4. Finally un-tick the box "LinkedIn may use my name and photo in social advertising"
5. Save

How to inform your LinkedIn connections?
Via your LinkedIn Inbox > Compose message in LinkedIn, you can send a message to 50 connections at once. All who, I am sure, will appreciate being informed.

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Just before Christmas I was sent a new Kindle by Amazon. Very kind of them! I was too busy using it to write a blog post in time for the Christmas rush, but there’s never a wrong time to write about something you like (a lot) so here’s my review of it.

It’s light, easy to use and very easy on the eyes, because of the quality of the e-ink they use.

No, you can’t read in bed, unlike with the Kindle app on the iPad, because you need light in order to read the ink – it’s not backlit, which means that, unlike reading on an iPad, tablet or laptop, your eyes aren’t strained and you don’t get tired after a couple of hours of reading.

I found I could read for as many hours at a time as I could find – one reading session lasted five hours as I demolished a Barry Eisler novel about the martial artist and hired assassin, John Rain.

Having an e-book reader that weighs next to nothing helps when couch-reading, too. Lying down to read Eisler, I didn’t suffer from the face-slap that occurs when your arms tire of holding up a heavy iPad over your head.

I’ve used e-book readers before, and Kindle’s 6-inch screen is no different to other readers, albeit with better (in my humble opinion) e-ink. I found that I was able to easily import nearly two dozen ‘classics’ from an old e-reader that I had sitting as text files on my pc, so I have no shortage of titles to keep my reading skills up.

Online purchase
One thing I really like is the seamless integration with the Amazon store. I came across a reference to another book in one of the books I was reading, so brought up the context menu, went to Amazon, searched for and found the book in question, bought it and went back to reading where I left off whilst the new book downloaded quietly in the background. Excellent!

The on-screen keyboard takes a bit of getting used to (especially if Apple have trained you to point and touch), but you get the hang of it, and it means your Kindle is smaller and sleeker by not having a physical keyboard as part of the hardware. A small price to pay.

A Luddite’s progress
I lent the Kindle to a friend, someone who hates computers and much prefers paper and ink. She was willing to give this new technology a try (but was definitely stopping short of trying an iPhone or iPad!).

To my surprise she liked it; principally for the reasons of weight and ease of purchase. She got quickly used to thumb-clicking a tab to turn a page, quicker it seems than I did. I had to reduce the font size because it felt like I was clicking every 10 seconds (I’m a fast reader).

Conclusion
I am fully enamoured with the new Kindle. It’s light, it stores a shedload of books (my bookshelves are groaning under the weight of books squeezed into it and on top of each other) and the reading with e-ink is surprisingly easy. The price, too (under AU$120 from Amazon, including postage) is a winner.

Amazon might ask for their review Kindle back. They might have a fight.

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I’ve been working with local governments over the last few months, helping them with their social media strategies and engagement tactics, and one thing that has particularly struck me is the disconnect between the people charged with carrying out the council’s online communication and the decision-makers themselves.

That is not, I hasten to add, any slur against either party, but is instead a reflection of the peculiar forces at play in any local government setting.

The people at the ‘sharp end’—the project managers and the professional communicators—are without any exception in my experience extremely sharp and able instigators of change. What they are up against is the painfully slow and democratic nature of local government.

Any initiative or idea needs to pass through several layers of management before it reaches the ultimate decision-makers, the councillors. Despite every good intention in the world, those councillors are hamstrung by the endless demands on their time from not only the council’s business, but also their own away-from-council business affairs. They are, after all, volunteers. Getting 15 or so grown adults to agree to anything takes a long process of hand-holding, education and trust-building. When those adults only meet once a month or so it becomes even harder to squeeze ideas and initiatives onto the agenda, and then get them heard and discussed.

Family-owned businesses can sometimes be like this, but rarely to this extent. There is usually a decision-maker—the CEO, perhaps—who tells people ‘yea or nay’ and instructs employees to ‘just get on with it’.

But councils don’t work in that fashion and thus my heart goes out to the professional communicators that I meet, no matter what their official job title, who want to engage with their council’s constituents in this new social world but who are held back by the slow, cautious beast of democracy.

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The oil company Chevron has been found guilty of dumping toxic waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon, but refuses to pay to clean it up.

Some of the excuses the senior management have come up with are bordering on the farcical (prompting one Australian reporter to ask, “Do you really believe what you’re saying?”).

The company is PR-floundering, and activist groups are having a field day.

One very creative group has set up the website chevronthinkswerestupid.org and has come up with a fabulous little call to action that enables you the reader to ‘help’ out the senior management by creating their next PR ‘spin’ responses for them.

You click on the photo of a spokesperson, fill in two text boxes where you can put a headline and a subhead, then fill in your personal details and hit ‘send’. Your creative input is reportedly sent to Chevron.

It’s a brilliant piece of user-generated campaigning, and something that every organisation needs to be prepared to counter when it happens to them (subtle clue: don’t do dumb stuff in the first place).

Check it out.

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