Social Media for Baby Boomers: Are You “With it”? Do you Twitter?

09 09 2008

Social Media for Baby Boomers: Are You “With it”? Do you Twitter?

Posted by: in Your Business

As a blogger on b5media, I’m very aware of social media. And I’m wondering if other baby boomers are too. I recently read a blog post about boomer women using social media to promote their businesses. And I’m wondering, do a lot of baby boomers use social media?

It’s pretty overwhelming, even for someone like me who has been around the World wide web since the days of Mosaic and Pine Mail (pre-GUI - really!). Apparently, many baby boomers are going to social media sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn (41 percent of us) and streaming video sites like YouTube (61 percent of us).

So, are we just wandering around out there, checking out the latest ABBA videos?

Or are we determinedly using social networking sites to market our products and services? For example, I’ve spent some time recently (probably too much time) on Twitter, where people answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 words or less. Some Twitter people are blatantly marketing, while others are just connecting.

I’ve a concern that we’re getting bombarded with too many of these social media sites. I get offers to join someone’s “LinkedIn” network all the time (most of these offers come from Gen Y students). If I joined everyone’s network, I’d get nothing else done. I haven’t figured out yet if they are worth joining.

What about you? Do you connect with people on the internet? Do you check out videos on YouTube? What social network site/s, if any, do you use? Comment or vote in my poll (right)