Erik Qualman's Blog, page 507

Get the Repairs You Need with Social Media

It’s a rainy Monday morning and your car breaks down.

Or you’re driving to pick your kids up from school and get in a fender bender.

All is okay except your car needs some repair.

Whether it’s just a minor scrape and dent from an accident, more serious damage or a basic repair, you’ll need a reputable, reliable car repair shop to take care of your car.

Drive Forward with Social Media

Car repair shops are one of those businesses where word-of-mouth is huge in marketing.

Sure, print, radio or TV ads may bring in some business, but it’s expensive for what it’s worth.

To keep the word-of-mouth going strong, car repair shops should be incorporating some social media into their marketing repertoire, and this helps you out when you are searching for somewhere to go.

On your end, the first thing you can do is ask around your friends and colleagues for a recommendation on car repair. One of those ways is asking on social media.

Pose a question on Facebook and probably more likely than not, you’ll get a wide variety of responses. Once you have some possibilities of where to go, check out the repair shops online.

Though car repair may not be the forerunning business for social media, most places do have a web page and some social media, even a blog or newsletter.

Take a look; see what they are doing.

Many shops incorporate Foursquare or Facebook check in and you can use this to see how often customers are using it. Read their Facebook page to see what customers have to say about them and what reviews they leave.

Even if you have to find a place on your own, check out their social media before going. You can view a Twitter feed to see what customers say and how responses flow or Facebook for the same purpose.

Social media is an excellent tool for finding a business. And you don’t have to stop once the repairs are done. If you’ve found a good repair shop, connect with them.

You may enjoy their newsletter or blog, or want to friend them on Facebook or follow on Instagram. You may be the next one referring someone to them.

Your Own Rights

You will also want to be aware of your own rights in the case of an accident.

All states have somewhat varying rights, but it pays to check out some information if you’ve been injured.

For instance, the following article, “Car accidents in Florida: Risky business” allows drivers in the Sunshine State to get some up-to-date, valid information in case of injury.

Remember to check into the rights of your own state, all the while getting more social with your repair needs.

Photo credit: Big StockPhoto.com

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5 Critical Factors Influencing Your Business Today

Some of these weren’t important just a few years ago. Others have been playing a crucial role for a long time. They have one thing in common – no matter if you are a small business owner or a represent a big company, you ignore them at your own risk.

1.      Customer Support

Statistics and surveys show that when a customer encounters a problem while dealing with a company, and this problem is promptly and efficiently solved by customer support, he/she values this company much more than in case a problem never arises. The thing is, it becomes a memorable experience instead of business as usual – people are all too used to businesses butting corners, and when you go out of your way to help them, they are sure to remember it, return to you later and tell their friends about such a pleasurable occasion.

2.      Website Hosting

Today it is hard to imagine a self-respecting business that wouldn’t have a website. Even if your business has little or nothing to do with the Internet, you still cannot do without a functional website; and if you own an online business, the website should be your top priority. Unstable or slow connection, periods of downtime, poorly chosen domain name – all these things may be fatal even for a well-known company, let alone a striving startup. That is why you should choose the best business hosting available – it certainly is an investment going to pay off in spades.

3.      Website Design

While on the subject of web, you should pay equally unwavering attention to the way your website looks and functions, not only to how stable is your connection. It is especially important today, due to rapid development of mobile technologies – a modern website should look and work equally well on scores of different devices and browsers, and it is your business to make sure no potential clients leave annoyed.

4.      Competition

It doesn’t matter what exactly you do, but your business never exists just by itself, in isolation from outside world. You may arrange everything perfectly within the boundaries of your firm, but how it correlates with what your competitors are doing is what really matters in the long run, especially if your business is a startup and there are a number of companies selling similar products or services. Even if what you sell is better, you may have a hard time convincing customers who have their established habits and preferences.

5.      Convenience

Let’s face it – people are lazy. They are always looking for ways to do something with the least possible effort. And no matter how awesome your product or service is, how perfectly your work process is organized, every additional step, minute and mouse click your client has to take to get to you reduce your chances of making a sale drastically. That is why making dealing with you as convenient as possible should be among your primary goals.

And which, in your opinion, are most the important factors influencing your business?

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Where’d you post your spring break pics?

Where’d you post your spring break pics?

FICO is one of the nation’s largest credit rating companies and they’re searching social media to analyze consumer’s creditworthiness. FICO is using new assessment tests to search for negative keywords like, wasted, trashed, & hammered. In a statement to the Financial Times Newspaper FICO CEO Will Lansing says it like so, “If you look at how many times a person says ‘wasted’ in their (Facebook) profile, it has some value in predicting whether they’re going to repay their debt.”  People are a bit upset since the FICO assessment  includes comments, meaning when your friends mention you turning up that can affect your credit score. Online privacy is like the  ghost of Christmas past. (Source: Chicago Tribune)

Want to protect your privacy? Of course we have a book for that – What Happens on Campus Stays on YouTube.

Update Post: Anyone down for Netflix & Chill?

Google isn’t giving up on social networking (Did we expect them to?). Their new mobile app called “Who’s Down” is all about finding out what other friends are doing then getting together. Users swipe right on a slider and the automatic message “Anyone down..” is added to their post with popular suggestions like “grab lunch?” “workout?” “watch a movie” as meetup suggestions.  Who’s Down targets college students and is currently invite-only. Some folks think the app is pointless. A student from Georgetown stated, “ If I want to hang out with people I already know, I’ll send a message to them on iMessage or GroupMe.” Let’s cross our fingers that we don’t have another Google Plus on our hands. But we wouldn’t mind getting an invite, or you can request one here. Good luck! (Source MSN)

Amazon isn’t so mean after all

Amazon dads are all smiles today. A memo was sent out to Amazon employees stating new conditions for maternity leave and wait for it… paternity leave.  The new rule is effective January 1, 2016, adding a 6 week paid parental leave for both women and men. Women now receive a 16 week paid leave after a new baby and men receive paid paternity leave of 6 weeks. Amazon is taking charge, considering only 17% of U.S companies offer paternity leave — so this is big news. We can’t wait to see who will follow suite. Baby #BOOM. (Source USA Today)

 

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Pre-Holiday Social Media Engagement Checklist

The holidays are just around the corner, which means it’s time to step up your marketing game for high season. Many companies start their holiday social media campaigns as early as October, but have no fear, by following this checklist your social media engagement strategy will be ready to go long before you solidify your Thanksgiving guest list.

Spread the holiday cheer.

Holidays oftentimes mean hassle. Disrupt the stress by giving your followers a reason to smile. OfficeMax wears the holiday marketing crown for creating the first viral christmas meme with Elf Yourself. It’s been a decade since the big box company started its popular marketing campaign, and even now that we’re saturated with clever vines and snapchats everyday, Elf Yourself remains a holiday classic, so much so that people in all 196 countries have elf-ed themselves. During the holiday seasons from 2006-2011 alone, consumers spent the equivalent of 7,124 years on the company’s Elf Yourself website. What makes OfficeMax’s campaign so effective is that it is personal, hilarious, and it’s a gift that keeps on giving because you can endlessly test out how ridiculous each of your friends looks in Will Ferrell’s green tights. By making customers laugh, you lead them to develop a positive emotional connection to your brand and a loyalty to your product.

Start a dialogue.

Don’t just launch giveaways or contests this season, initiate discussions among your users. Ask them to post favorite holiday activities, party tips, or photos of them using your products in an inventive way. A great way to foster conversations is through creative hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, so get to the drawing board to brainstorm ways to combine your company name or motto with something festive and catchy. By soliciting user feedback and then following up with personalized replies, you humanize your brand, signal that you care about your customers, and show that your company is committed to making their holiday season as enjoyable as possible.

Help consumers “gift better.”

On a similar note, your social media campaign should aim to help make life easier for consumers. J. Crew has done a phenomenal job boosting its brand exposure while helping stressed out buyers with its “Gift (Better) Guides” on Pinterest. Depending on your brand and products, Pinterest may not make sense for your marketing strategy, but you should nevertheless follow J.Crew’s lead by finding ways to supply your followers with helpful tips and tricks to survive this holiday season. For instance, you can tweet holiday-hacks or link to how-to guides for getting through your third social event of the night. Last year, Stubhub encouraged people to share their ideal ticket gift using the hashtag #tixwish as way to enter a giveaway contest with a grand prize of $10,000 on New Year’s Eve. This was a win-win situation for everyone involved. Someone won big, everyone else got to let their friends and family know exactly what tickets they really wanted as stocking stuffers, and Stubhub gathered over 500,000 mentions on twitter. By using your social media networks to help people simplify their gifting process, you’ll be sure to make followers think of you as Santa’s helper rather than just another holiday spammer.

Invest in a social media management app.

Once you’ve planned your holiday marketing strategy, you need to make sure you’re targeting the right audience at the right time to yield the strongest user engagement. This is where data analytics come in. If you don’t already use a social media dashboard, you’ll make your life a whole lot easier by investing in one to help you this season. Hootsuite and Buffer are two of the most popular social management apps, helping you better understand your audience, the platforms they use most, and the times of day they are most likely to interact with your posts. By analyzing your post engagement history and audience behaviors, these dashboards will help you decide which social media platforms and types of holiday messages will resonate most with your specific target audience. You don’t want to find out after the season that most of your followers are in an entirely different timezone than you thought so your midnight “Happy New Year” actually came at 6 AM. No one wants to hear from you then.

Upgrade your design to keep engagement up after New Year’s.

At the end of the day, you don’t just want users to think fondly of your company because you had a great holiday marketing campaign. You want to keep the traffic up long after the holiday cheer dies down. A great way to achieve this is to take the long view when planning your holiday marketing campaign, focusing not just on grabbing people’s attention on social media, but by upgrading their experience once they’ve landed on your homepage. Use this holiday season as an opportunity to freshen up your website and app, making the user experience more intuitive and enjoyable. The best way to differentiate your online presence is to hire a designer. Toptal is your one-stop shop when it comes to finding expert help and opinions. If you don’t have design experience and aren’t exactly sure what you’re looking for, check out the company’s guides for hiring UI designers and UX designers.

Conclusion:

Nailing your holiday social media strategy is all about finding creative opportunities to better connect with your customers in a way that makes sense for your brand. The best holiday strategies are the ones that add value to user experience, be it through entertainment or stress-relief and holiday-hacks. Whatever strategy you employ, make sure your message is in line with your longer term marketing goals so that you don’t grab followers’ attention for Christmas and lose them by New Year’s Day.

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5 Proven Techniques to Use Social Media as a Network

The importance of social media as an effective tool for building brand name, increasing sales and boosting engagements is discussed on regular basis. However, most of the marketers and social media experts ignore its amazing high networking ROI and this is especially true for those individuals who usually stay away from crowded professional gatherings. If you are one of those who fail to increase ROI with social media, you can use top five tips to take maximum advantage of SM strategies.

1: Interview Industry Leaders

There are a lot of people who are trying to grab the attention of popular leaders from their industry, however, the competition is too tough and if they can’t get them out of the crowd, they can’t stand out. Therefore, you must do something that can make you catch their eyes and one of the best way to do this is to conduct interviews for video programs, podcasts and blogs. If you directly try to approach industry leaders to arrange a meeting, you might not be able to get positive response but if you offer them to record and share an interview on your online channels and blogs, you can easily reach to the top line.

2: Influence Your Web Based Content

Conducting an interview brings you lots of advantages for your business and you can also extract some of the most important points from the discussion you have with the leaders and influences during interviews and make them part of your blog posts. You can mention their names, their point of views on certain things, their advice for new entrepreneurs or whatever you think is significant to highlight. You will soon see a boost in ROI through this simple yet so effective networking strategy on social forums.

3: Re-post Your Content Periodically

Once you get the opportunity to interview someone from the leaders queue, don’t miss out this opportunity but do your preparation before the interview so you can get maximum advantage of it by having fresh and useful advantage for long time. You should ensure that this does not stay as time sensitive stuff but try to get the points which you can repost periodically on all your social media accounts. For example, if you posted something in 2014, it should be appropriate to repost in 2015 too. In this way, you don’t have to conduct interviews every year but you will be able to recycle the content because of its never diminishing significance over years.

4: Recommend Someone on Social Platforms

Everyone wants to be appreciated especially if it is publicly. If you want to give a positive impression over someone, you can use LinkedIn recommendation as an effective tool. Spare some time and write a recommendation for someone who you know very well and post it. He/she will surely appreciate your sincere efforts. Though, simply recommending someone is never your main goal, you can still get positive response when they write recommendation for you too. This is called a big return on investment and surely you are going to be benefited with it in future.

5: Timely Response to Real-Time Events

If you appreciate some of your colleagues, friends or other people available on social media, you should also follow them because in this way, you can catch variety of events and opportunities that are time sensitive. For example, if someone you follow on social media lives in a different city but currently visiting yours, you can catch him/her and invite for dinner or some other events. If they accept, this is going to be a great opportunity to extend your online network.

Author Bio

Katherine Ralph has been a blogger since 2011. She finished her bachelor in administration from University of Westminster and later she joined an international institute in 2011 where she preferred to continue custom dissertation writers and blogger because of her in-depth interest in this field of education.

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Rent Social Media for the Best Properties

If you’re in the market for a rental property, then let social media help you find your home sweet home.

More and more rental agencies are promoting their properties on sites like Facebook and Instagram, which makes social media a great resource for finding the perfect rental.

Here are just a few ways you can use social media to find your next rental:

Local Listings

There’s a good chance that if you’re looking for a rental property, you’re probably looking within your area. Social media is the perfect destination when it comes to searching for local rental property listings.

For example, Facebook now offers local sales ads for realtors and rental companies. Although this doesn’t sound like anything special for you, the renter, it actually is.

Local Facebook ads means the rental property advertisements you see are for rentals in your area.

This makes Facebook not only a social site, but also a research site when it comes to finding a rental property in your area.

Likewise, because your Facebook newsfeed refreshes constantly, you can rest assured you’re getting the latest offerings from local rental agencies.

Viewing Property Photos and Videos

As the following article looks at, rental companies know how to make prospective renters fall in love with properties online: eye-catching photos. This is exactly where photo and video-friendly social sites come into play.

Instead of just putting photos up on the company website, rental agencies are beginning to showcase their properties on social media.

Facebook is a great place for viewing rental property photos and videos.

You can either visit the Facebook pages of rental agencies or follow rental companies to receive listings directly in your newsfeed.

Instagram is also growing in popularity among rental companies for sharing photos and short video clips.

Rental Deals for Followers

Following rental companies on Facebook and Instagram is beneficial for a number of reasons.

As mentioned before, you’ll get the latest local listings in your newsfeed simply by friending the company’s Facebook page or following their Instagram account.

In addition, you’ll also be the first to know about all rental deals and promotions the rental company has to offer.

Whether it’s a free month’s rent or discounted monthly rent for signing a lease during a promotional period, following rental agencies on social media is a great way to track down deals and discounts.

Open House Invites

Photos and videos are helpful, but it’s always nice to walk through a property before signing a lease. A growing trend among rental companies is posting open house invites on social media.

Instead of missing out on open houses for rental properties in your area, you can simply keep an eye on your social accounts for invite updates and reminders.

Questions and Comments

Social media is social for a reason: it makes it easier than ever to communicate with friends, families, and businesses.

When you go the social media route for your rental search, you can send questions directly to rental companies about the properties they’re offering.

Likewise, you can also use social media to reach out to friends and family to find out which rental agencies they use. All of this makes the hunt for a great rental property a breeze.

If you want your next rental search to be an easy, hassle-free experience, then go the social route.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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Instagram Looks To Snapchat For Inspiration

What To Say When Your Friend Copies Your Outfit…

Looks like Instagram is using Snapchat and Twitter for inspiration when it comes to curated content. The social media site wants to take popular content for a specific event and make it easier for users to see, think like Snapchat Live and Twitter Moments. Instagrammers were able to see this feature on Halloween when a prompt directed scrollers to an “immersive” video feed curated by Instagram employees. Curation is the future people! (Source re/code)

Quote of the Day: “Look up.”

Google, Facebook, SpaceX and OneWeb all have one common goal. That is to beam internet everywhere. The United Nations set a goal for themselves to have 50% of the world offline by 2020 compared to the 57% it is at now. But unfortunately, the UN doesn’t think that will happen. This isn’t stopping Google, Facebook, SpaceX and OneWeb though. They believe this lack of Internet could simply be fixed by beaming Internet from high flying drones or low flying satellites. Each company has large, expensive plans on how they can do this which you should check out here. (Source CNN)

Don’t Screenshot My Selfie!

Last week, Snapchat changed their Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. And some people low key freaked out. Snapchat selfie takers feared that their snaps were being stored by Snapchat but the picture messaging app released a blog today saying that pictures are not stored or being stockpiled from them. But they can’t help you if your friend screenshots your double chin selfie. The new Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy updated users on a license for the Live Stories and talk about in-app purchases. (Source CNET)

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5 Extraordinary Things to Know about SEO Friendly Web Design

Whether you are a small business owner designing your website for the first time or thinking about redesigning an existing one, you have to wonder about the introductions and changes that need to be made for making your web design search engine friendly. Ensuring that the design of your website is search engine optimized can aid you in ensuring that you can get high rankings, which can impact the volume of traffic and your sales and profits in the long run. There are lots of things you have to consider in order to make your website design search engine friendly, but the top five things that every small business owner should be aware of are discussed here:

Number 1- Your website design has to be responsive.

As far as small businesses are concerned, the local ones in particular, it is incredibly important to have good rankings in mobile search. Why? First off, about 50% of the people who conduct a search on mobile visit the shop within a few days of their search. In addition, more than 70% of the searches done via mobile eventually end up leading to offline purchases. You need to have a mobile friendly website design if you want to do well in mobile search results. Responsive web design is considered the best because it offers the same experience to smartphone users, tablet visitors and those on desktop as well.

Having a responsive web design saves you from the effort of creating multiple pages for various screen sizes. All you have to do is create a normal website design and the responsive template or theme will make the necessary adjustments for fitting on any screen.

Number 2- The text should be your focus.

While almost all types of media are crawled by search engines for determining the rank of a website, it is undeniable that good old text remains the ideal option for search engine optimization. This is one of the primary reasons why content marketing has gained such importance; every page of your website needs to have written content. Every page needs to have text even if it is in a small amount. If an audio or video is posted, it is best to have a text-based transcription as well.

Text is also required for the META description and SEO title for every page, which have to be unique and should also comprise of the main keywords or phrases for optimization purposes. Most businesses make the mistake of mentioning crucial information in images rather than text. However, text contained in images isn’t tracked by search engine crawlers and using a text-version for providing important information is recommended in order to be discovered.

Number 3- Images should also be optimized.

Yes, text is important, but so are images and they also need to be optimized for better search visibility. When you use text for this purpose, you can enjoy double benefits. This is due to the fact that your product page will be optimized for a specific keyword phrase and it will also give your image the golden opportunity of appearing in the image search results of search engines like Google. There are several ways you can use text for optimizing your images. Firstly, the filename of the image can be renamed for including a specific phrase or keyword. In this way, the main keywords can also become part of the images. Secondly, all HTML attributes should be used for inserting images on webpages. Thirdly, you can also write a caption beneath the image explaining the purpose of the image or its content.

Number 4- A proper navigation structure is required.

Another important rule for SEO friendly website design is to make a website that has text links and a clear hierarchy. There should be at least one static text link that can be used for reaching every page. You should take the organization of your website into account when you are planning the link structure. This could be simple, depending on the number of pages on your website because you can simply create a main navigation bar that links to all webpages of the site. Sometimes it can be complicated too as you have to think of categories and subcategories and the pages contained in each.

If you wish to provide a streamlined and smooth user experience, it is best to stick to just three levels. Your job should be to simplify the experience rather than making your customer jump from hoop to hoop in order to reach their desired destination. Apart from clear navigation for your visitors, the website should also boast simple text links in the footer for the main page of the website. In this way, you can rest assured that search engine crawlers and visitors alike will be able to discover it.

Number 5- Redirecting is also necessary.

When you are redesigning your website instead of making it for the first time, you should bear in mind that the old pages shouldn’t be completely scrapped. If you remove the page, your visitors will be informed that it doesn’t exist any longer. SEO expert Neil Patel writes in his post on what is SEO, if the page had a good ranking in search engines, but doesn’t open anymore; it will be removed from the search engine results. This means that you will end up losing traffic, which you were receiving previously. Hence, it is a better decision to redirect the old page to a new one in order to continue receiving the traffic.

The same concept is applicable when you are updating the permalinks on your website. If you wish to incorporate keyword-optimized permalinks in your website, it is essential for you to redirect the previous URLS to the new ones to prevent loss of traffic and potential customers. You can also customize a 404 page where you provide your visitors with alternative links if they are unable to access a particular page or URL.

When you incorporate these tips, your website design will become search engine friendly as well as visitor friendly and improve the functionality as a whole.

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11 Clever Tricks for Effective B2B Landing Pages

B2B or business to business means a situation when one business is performing a commercial transaction with the other. It is as simple as that. You might have known this already. But you might not know what is landing page? A landing page is the destination page at which you arrive when you click on a link from the results of a search engine. Landing pages are important from the point of view of generating business. A business looking for a commercial transaction on a search engine will most probably convert leads (not sales) only when it lands to an effective destination page. If you are a B2B vendor, you must know these 11 clever tricks for creating really effective landing pages.

1.  A single main message

A landing page should focus on a single message that is your goal. The remaining conversation should revolve around that goal only. You should be clear when writing the content on a landing page. For example, if you want to offer a free trial of your product, then you can also present a case study of a client already satisfied by your product. It will complement your free trial. But, if you give a link to a downloadable useful data, it may distract the website visitor from the offer of free trial.

2.  Relevant content

Your business to business web design should be relevant to the content the visitor was looking for. If it is not relevant to the search, the visitor is anyhow not going to stay on your webpage.

3. Educate the prospective B2B

You should design the landing page in a way that the message is conveyed that you not want to close the sale right now. You should focus on educating your prospective B2B client. Provide the right information at this phase. Do not push the B2B prospect to talk to you.

4.  Ask for permission to send mails

Do not intervene in the personal space of the B2B prospect. Ask for their permission to interact further. Respect their privacy if they do not want any emails from you yet.

5.  Use bulleted format

Try to use paragraph breaks, bullet points, etc. when your landing page contains a lot of data. Such formatting features catch the attention of the visitor and keep him engaged for a longer period of time.

6.  Do not ask them to contact you

Do not impose it on the B2B prospect to call you. Instead, you can ask them to leave their number and preferred time so that you can make a call to them.

7.  Do not advertise aggressively

Aggressive advertisement pulls the visitor away from the website. Advertise in limit. Do not be pushy. The visitor has landed on your webpage because he was looking for something that you were offering. Advertisements may force him to leave.

8. Call to action

If you are offering an interesting free product, you can provide a CTA or clear to action button. It means that you can ask them to take an action by using great words like “subscribe”, “enjoy” or “get”. By doing this, you can also judge the success of your landing page.

9. Trust seals

It means that you can procure the approval of a third party which is credible to ensure the trust of the user in your webpage.

10.  Testimonial quotes

You can your satisfied clients to write positive testimonials for you. You can also give them goodies for the favor done.

11.  Transparency about your privacy policy

If you are clear about privacy policy with your B2B prospects, you can increase your chances of converting your leads. Being transparent increases the faith of prospects. 

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Why Do Senior Citizens Need to Tap Into Social Networking?

Although social media is geared toward younger audiences, more and more senior citizens are jumping on the social bandwagon.

Whether it’s to stay connected with friends and family or read up on the latest health topics, social media is quickly becoming an invaluable resource for the senior community.

Here are just a few ways seniors are taking advantage of social media:

Reaching Out to the Senior Community

Seniors are becoming more technology and Internet savvy each day, so it comes as no surprise that the senior community on social media is on the rise.

In fact, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, 59% of seniors age 65 and older go online each day. This percentage is expected to increase by 20% in the next five years.

In addition, of the roughly 60% of seniors who go online daily, 46% engage in social media activities while using the Internet.

In other words, a growing number of seniors are reaching out to friends, family, and others in the senior community through social sites like Facebook.

Staying Connected to Family and Friends

Many seniors are using social media sites simply to stay connected with their loved ones. With sites like Instagram and Facebook, social media has become an excellent way to share photos and videos.

Seniors who no longer live near their families can use social media to view pictures of their children and grandchildren as well as share photos and videos of their own.

As the following article looks at, thanks to Facebook and other similar sites, senior living has become more social than ever before.

Joining Senior-Only Social Sites

The social sites mentioned thus far are great for all audiences, but sometimes seniors just want to connect with other seniors.

That’s where senior-only social sites come into play. There are growing number of senior-friendly social sites like Eons and Boomer Living.

By joining these sites, seniors can participate in posts, chats, and topics that relate to senior living and retirement.

In addition, senior-only social sites have tons of helpful resources for making the most out of the retirement years including activity suggestions as well as health and well-being tips.

Tracking Down Discounts and Promotions

Businesses of all kinds are beginning to use social media as a way to offer followers discounts and promotions.

Seniors who are hungry for a great deal can use social media as a continuously updated coupon book.

Considering most seniors are retired, saving money is a top priority.

By following businesses on social sites like Facebook, seniors can have access to promotions, upcoming sales alerts, and printable coupons based on their likes and needs.

Asking Social Questions

Speaking of following businesses on social media, the social environment makes customer outreach a breeze. If seniors have questions on certain products or services, they can simply message businesses through their social pages.

If a particular business isn’t on social media, seniors can also post questions to their friends and family.

Whether it’s a health-related question or something more specific, social audiences are always willing to help.

From connecting with loved ones to senior-only sites, it’s plain to see that senior citizens should tap into social networking.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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