Taking Advantage Of Social Media Demographics

Participation in social media has increased for all American adults across the board in the last year, but especially in the 50 to 64 year old category.

Now if you're an artist that's targeting a teenage or twenty-something demographic, it's important to know that social media use is growing in that age group too, because it's another tool to reach your audience.

But if you're an artist that's trying to reach an older demo, this information is critical because this might now be the best way to reach them.

And it's a great demo to sell to. The older the demo, the more money they have to spend, the more likely they'll buy CDs, and the less likely they are to pirate music. If you have something they want, they have no trouble buying it, providing they know about it.

Pew suggests three reasons for the growing popularity of social networking among older Americans:

• It enables them to reconnect with people from their past.
• It enables them to find support in times of poor health and chronic disease.
• It enables communication across generation gaps.

So how to reach them? Here's a very brief outline of what to try that has been covered in other posts here:

1) Use hashtags with your tweets. Hashtags are keywords that are included in your tweets (explained here) that enable people who are searching Twitter on a particular topic to find you.

2) Have a Facebook fan page and keep it fresh with posts.

3) Make sure that all tweets and Facebook posts link back to your website (you do have one, right?).

There's certainly more to reaching your demo on social networks than these three items, but they're a fast and easy way to start.

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