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RSSAccording to a recent ThirdAge/JWT Boom study, people over age 40 participate heavily in word-of-mouth and value personal recommendations and expert opinions, but they have not embraced social networking or blogs despite being heavy users of other online services,.
Boomers want to connect and interact with others in their communities around shared interests and common issues, but they use more traditional web communications tools, such as email, to keep in touch.
| Web Based Activities Reflecting The Most Interest By Respondents | |
| Activity | % Respondents Using |
| Health & Wellness Info | 97% |
| | 96 |
| Keep in touch w/Family/Friends | 92 |
| Read articles | 91 |
| Product research | 88 |
| Receive photos of family/friends | 84 |
| Shop online | 78 |
| Source: ThirdAge and JWT Boom, June 2008 | |
Asked whether they visited any sites to connect and engage with others - i.e., social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) - or might in the future...
"Do you visit Social Networking sites to connect and engage with others..."
- 53% said no
- 22% said yes
- 26% said that they did not but might
Source: ThirdAge and JWT Boom, June 2008
Among the 53% who said they had not visited such sites:
- 47 % cited concerns over privacy and having personal information on the web
- 39 % said they are too busy
- 32% said they do not see the benefit of spending time social networking
Boomers also expressed "little or no interest" in the following activities:
| Web Based Activities Reflecting Little Or No Interest By Respondents | |
| Activity | % of Respondents |
| Writing blogs | 67% |
| Participating in general social networking | 63% |
| Playing games with others | 62% |
| Listening to podcasts/prerecorded audio content | 55% |
| Downloading music | 44% |
| Source: ThirdAge and JWT Boom, June 2008 |
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Boomers participate in trusted online communities and share opinions about brands. They're also open to traditional marketing and e-marketing, as long as the message is coming from a source or brand they know and trust.
- 75% who have received promotional emails about products and services have clicked through to the site being promoted
- More than 55% have purchased a product or service promoted in an email
- 93% of respondents who have read an article about a website in print (newspaper or magazine) have later visited the site online
Respondents were most likely to trust a Web site's content if the site corresponded to a trusted brand or featured credible expertise.
- 83% reported the content needed to be attributed to experts, authors or authorities with subject-matter credibility
- 66% said they trust sites whose content is sponsored by a company they know and trust
- 62 % said they would trust a site if they had been going to it for a long time and came to trust its brand
Other Findings:
Boomers participate in viral or word-of-mouth marketing as much as or more than younger age groups. 93% of Boomers are very or somewhat likely to share product information or news with friends. 80% of Boomers use a broadband connection at home.
Boomers alone account for 78 million people in the US and control more than 83% of consumer spending. Some 40% of the US population is over 45, with 50% market growth projected in the next 15 years. Boomer spending is expected to surpass $4.6 trillion by 2015.
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Because Baby Boomers span a total of 18 consecutive years (1946-1964), it is routinely divided into two distinct sub-groups. The older group (born 1946-1954) embodies much of the behavior and attitudes described in classic Baby Boomer style as described in the article above.
The younger group (born 1955-1964), however, grew up at very different period of time, resulting in a very different outlook toward the world. It's for this reason that members of the younger group routinely seem to have more in common with members of Generation X (the generation immediately following) than they do with the older Baby Boomer group.
Failing to account for these two very different sub-groups often results in erroneous Baby Boomer interpretation.
When boomers blog, is it like the noise of a tree falling in the woods going unheard? The appeal of the message and content is the big deal, not the carbon-40 test results of the author.
Boomers do indeed blog, especially where their audience is generally younger. I write about social media and its' relationship to traditional media. My readers are not boomers.
Also consider who the bloggers listen to, respond to, and engage with. That's a lot harder to get your hands around then just demographic classification, but much more revealing. It's hard, in part, because the vast majority of blogs have comment-per-pageview rates in the low single digits, regardless of the readers' demographics. When you consider that the vast majority of blogs have small readerships, data collection requires very wide cross-sectional sampling.
I wonder how many boomer blogs ThirdAge/JWT actually analyzed and just how rigorous and relevant their methodology was.
The link at the bottom of your post should read: "For more dis-information, please visit here".
http://richreader.blogspot.com/
High time focus was brought back to this group. It's where the real action is. Ironic isn't it?
I can't argue with your study of course, but if you ran the same study and changed the age limit to "over 30" I don't think the findings would change much.
Was there an upper age limit? Boomers are under 62 years old, but if respondents to age 80 were included, this would skew things.
@Arthur Koff: You lumped blogs with banners and pops? Do you have a clue what a blog is? Hint: you can have a banner on your blog, but you can't have a blog on your banner.
The areas that get the most traffic are finding employment, funding your retirement, memory loss, arthritis pain and senior travel. Last year a great many visitors looked at volunteer information but this area no longer has a great deal of traffic.
Since we went live in 2003 we have adjusted the site and added content regularly. We used the trail and error method as there were no specifics as to what would best work. We quickly learned that blogs, banners and pop-ups did not work.
Traffic in the past few months has increased exponentially. We assume this is because of the combination of inflation, lower housing values and decreased portfolio and retirement savings values. The huge cost of health care for older Americans seems to be another reason. Put these all together and more and more retirees and people planning their retirement realize they must continue to work in some capacity in order to maintain the lifestyle they had planned for their retirement years.