Online Real Estate Technology

It’s now official, Facebook added it’s 200 millionth user last Wednesday,and if Facebook were a country it would now be the fifth largest country after China, India, the US and Indonesia. The US still leads the way with the most numbers of users, with western Europe having the highest concentration of users and Australia now claiming approx 4,600,000 users to Facebook per month. I’ve included the US figures in a chart below for you, which gives you the age demographic breakdowns and as you can see, again it’s not a Gen X & Y site, so as a business you need to start to utilise the networking available to you via Facebook.

US Facebook Traffic Increases Again amongst Older Users

News also today that the other 3 year old flavour of the month Twitter, is growing in popularity with older consumers. In fact, according to Comscore, the majority of Twitter users are over 35, so in effect, younger users are not driving the success that Twitter is having world wide. The number of Twitter users worldwide in February had grown to 10 million, up 700%, from a year ago,while in the US the number hit 4 million, a growth of 1000% over last year. Those aged 35 – 44 spend 20 minutes on Twitter on each visit, but one surprising statistic that stands out, is that the 55 – 64 year olds spend an average of 9 minutes on Twitter, the longest of any demographic using the site. Over the past 12 months both Myspace and Facebook have experienced growth in the older age groups, but it’s Twitters popularity that is being driven totally by the older users.

Twitter Trend Use

To me this is a clear example of the increasing comfort level that older users have with social media sites and the fact that they are embracing these technologies means that business should embrace these sites today, and no longer have a “ban this site“ policy. What it means to you as a business, is that your customers are embracing this type of communication faster than you are,so if you want to stay relevant to them as a business, you need to move with them. 

The more traditional forms of marketing are being left behind, so as a business, you need to use social media from a non traditional approach. One side effect of a social media strategy, is the impact is has on a companies culture, after all, social media is built on sharing.

I’ve seen so many businesses try to attract consumers via social media sites using product as a incentive, and I’ve seen that approach fail time and time again. You need to use the medium where it’s strength is and that is in networking, providing information and interacting and sharing with your customers. 

You need to enter the conversation and create the handshake.

If you don’t know where to start with this strategy, then contact me via this blog and I’ll be very happy to help you on your way.