The Personal CRM Tool for Baby Boomers

Baby boomers have glommed onto Facebook in huge numbers and are using it ways unanticipated by its Gen Y founders. If you don't believe me, believe Lev Grossman in Time Magazine, yes that ancient relic, who announced in the February 23rd issue "Facebook is for Old People." The interesting question is ... Is this truly a new thing or a changing social phenomenon or have the biggest, chattiest, most adaptive and pcoolest age cohort simply found the right technology to facilitate what they've always donep -- start or follow trends or connect and hang out with each other? The adoption curve is a hockey stick. The Accenture Consumer Electronics Survey says boomers posted a 59 percent increase in use of social networks; a rate of adoption 30 timesp faster than any other age group. Facebook's InsideFacebook blog reports that in the last 60 days alone, the number of Facebook users 35+ has doubled to roughly 17.1 million out of the 200 million global users. NPD's Entertainment Trends in America study found that 41 percent, of 11,600 boomers surveyed, visited social networks an average of 8 times in a 90 daypperiod.p Sinceponline interactions aren't unfamiliar to boomers maybe social networking is a natural outgrowth of existing personal and business behaviors. People 35-44 spend more time on the web than any other age group -- 74 minutes per day on average --according to Nielsen's Council for Research Excellence. And 45-54 year olds lead the way in two-way communication spending the most time on e-mail. The datapprovoked "surprise" from Russ Crupnick at NPD and convinced Adam Kasper at Havas Digital "that the growth of Facebook reflects an important demographic shift which is now a cultural phenomenon." For Clara Shih, who created the first Facebook business application which led to write her new book titled The Facebook Era, "Facebook has brought on a transformation in human relationships. Its a sociocultural paradigm shift that is a change in the way humans interact with one another, and therefore a change in the kind and quality of relationships we're able to have across our personal and professional lives." Clara is an over-educated, Silicon Valley tech evangelist so you have to excuse her over-the-top shot at pop sociology. But she identifies Facebook as "personal CRM" which is spot on. She also sees Facebook as a humanizing force that changes the web from anonymous information to a"world wide web of people" were communication is one-to-one, subject to permissions and emotional because you see images and "get to know or get reminded of the person behind the name." This raw human connection engine is my candidate for the driving force behind the growth of Facebook.p But I'm equally intrigued by Clara's notion that "the power of the social graph and knowing who is connected to whom, and how ... where information flows through social filters and get socially distributed" has the power to acceleratepword of mouth marketing, personal referrals and even multi-level-marketing to warp drive. It also potentially changes how we conceptualize, craft, target and deliver messages to penetrate social networks and capitalize on the network effect. Facebook, rather than changing behavior, is a personalpCRM tool to super charge the behavior boomers have always done or wished to do. You can find, connect and communicate with people from many places, times in your life or associations easily and quickly. You can do so actively, by writing, commenting or tagging. Or just be a happy voyeur. You can decide who gets what information, cross-pollinate information or make new connections among the people you know and deposit ideas, news, pictures, video and things you like or care about in a central, universally accessible place for your friends, family and even business acquaintances to access. Facebook makes boomers' lives easier. And while it might freak out our kids to be "friended" by Mom or Uncle Bob, boomers use Facebook differently than their children. They are more reticent to share information, less likely to leave comments and a bit slower to join groups. Some of this reflectspour upbringing and some reflects our limited skills at uploading or cross-platform processing. The challenge for marketers, who themselves have been reticent to use Facebook as an advertising and communication tool, arep... 1.pHow can you present your brand credibly in this environment? What kind of imaging and messaging will resonate with boomers in the moment? How user-centric are you or should you be? 2. Is there genuine, measurable business or customer relationship value in accumulating fans or friends? 3. Will your brand advocates/loyalists use their personal CRM toolpto give you access to theirpnetworks? And if so, willpit pay off?pAre your core customers on Facebook and do they expect to see you there? 4. What's the most sensible and efficient way to test-and-learn on Facebook?