Blogging for seniors
Frank Salerno
October 25, 2005
Now that podcasting has been pushed ahead of other digital actors as if by a pushy stage mother, must bloggers resign themselves to a place in the back row of the chorus?
It depends on who is sitting in the audience.
Blogging, unlike its more agile and talkative cousin podcasting, is not a companion medium. You can’t blog while you are driving. You can’t blog while you are walking. And you certainly can’t blog while you are snorkeling.
Instead, blogging moves at the speed of sitting. At this very moment, bloggers across this great land are pouring themselves a second cup of coffee, removing a wedge of streusel cake, and sitting down at their computers. They will amuse and be amused, inform and be informed, and just plain connect with their virtual brethren sitting out there in the blogosphere.
Who are these bloggers?
Increasingly, they are not the folks subscribing to podcasts. Podcasting, at least for the foreseeable future, will attract digital gabbers and listeners who are on the move. Before leaving the house they will pack a water bottle, a sports bag and an i-Pod onto which they have already downloaded podcast streams.
Blogging will settle into a comfortable middle age spending time with the folks sitting at home. What’s more, in a show of solidarity an increasing number of these people will be found among America’s senior citizens. (That coffee they are pouring is decaf.)
This graying of the blogosphere will be reinforced by a number of factors. For starters, many of today’s seniors became comfortable with computers while they were in the workforce. Gone is the stereotype of technology adverse old men and women for whom the fax machine was the next big thing. In addition, an increasing number of seniors will feel empowered to start their own blogs as blogging software becomes ever easier to use.
Why else will blogs become attractive meeting places for seniors?
1. Blogging takes time. Seniors who may have once worked time and a half now have time and a half on their hands.
2. Blogs offer automatic community. Many seniors, having been displaced from the community of the workplace, seek the camaraderie of new communities.
3. Committed bloggers must possess a point of view and a willingness to express it. Many seniors, by virtue of their experience, possess a point of view. For reasons including physical ailments and social isolation they will turn to blogs to express it.
4. Most blogs are textually heavy and visually light. As a result, the home dial up connections leading to many seniors’ computers do not act as communications roadblocks.
5. As seniors travel along the path leading to different concerns and decisions, they need lots of new information. This can be information about travel, housing, medicine, financial planning, illness, physicians, government-funded programs, and much more. Blogs are wonderful tools for both the solicitation and sharing of information. When you consider that this need for information may coincide with seniors’ decreased mobility, you realize that blogging is doubly advantaged.
6. Young people have the attention span of wolves. They are always on the move, searching for the next new technology. Seniors are steady and faithful. As young people move on from blogging, seniors will stay true.
Now that we have considered why seniors will spend parts of their free afternoons blogging, what are the next steps for marketers seeking to connect with these armchair digitati through a sponsored blog? Following is a list of suggestions:
1. After auditing seniors’ information needs and interests, determine how you can satisfy them. Assembling a list of links to information rich websites is a good start.
2. Launch a blog that addresses these needs and interests. Before doing so, of course, you must first designate someone with the time and patience to write and monitor the blog. Remember to design the blog for senior eyes and sensibilities. This means no reverse, san serif or mice type.
3. Identify a collection of field hands who will post comments to the blog during the early days before it attracts an audience.
4. Recruit a group of experts to address areas of interest that dovetail with your audience’s information needs and your firm’s marketing goals. For example, a travel tour company can invite a travel expert to blog on the convenience of traveling with an organized tour.
5. Manage your blog with a firm; though gentle hand. Blogs are, I’m going to say it, blogocracies, and any audience will opt out if there are overt signs of blog control. They will say, you guessed it, “blaaaaah.”
6. If you have the resources, put together and field a search engine-marketing plan.
7. Direct traffic to your blog through tags at the end of conventional electronic and print media. Your blog can become an oversized virtual church basement to which you invite prospects and customers to meet over coffee and cake. (With all this talk about coffee and cake, I am planning a second career selling space on blog sites to caffeine and powdered sugar conglomerates.)
Before signing off, I would like to leave with a word of caution. Blogs are viral. Once you launch one, be prepared for both positive and negative posts from your audience. Oh, and don’t dunk.
It depends on who is sitting in the audience.
Blogging, unlike its more agile and talkative cousin podcasting, is not a companion medium. You can’t blog while you are driving. You can’t blog while you are walking. And you certainly can’t blog while you are snorkeling.
Instead, blogging moves at the speed of sitting. At this very moment, bloggers across this great land are pouring themselves a second cup of coffee, removing a wedge of streusel cake, and sitting down at their computers. They will amuse and be amused, inform and be informed, and just plain connect with their virtual brethren sitting out there in the blogosphere.
Who are these bloggers?
Increasingly, they are not the folks subscribing to podcasts. Podcasting, at least for the foreseeable future, will attract digital gabbers and listeners who are on the move. Before leaving the house they will pack a water bottle, a sports bag and an i-Pod onto which they have already downloaded podcast streams.
Blogging will settle into a comfortable middle age spending time with the folks sitting at home. What’s more, in a show of solidarity an increasing number of these people will be found among America’s senior citizens. (That coffee they are pouring is decaf.)
This graying of the blogosphere will be reinforced by a number of factors. For starters, many of today’s seniors became comfortable with computers while they were in the workforce. Gone is the stereotype of technology adverse old men and women for whom the fax machine was the next big thing. In addition, an increasing number of seniors will feel empowered to start their own blogs as blogging software becomes ever easier to use.
Why else will blogs become attractive meeting places for seniors?
1. Blogging takes time. Seniors who may have once worked time and a half now have time and a half on their hands.
2. Blogs offer automatic community. Many seniors, having been displaced from the community of the workplace, seek the camaraderie of new communities.
3. Committed bloggers must possess a point of view and a willingness to express it. Many seniors, by virtue of their experience, possess a point of view. For reasons including physical ailments and social isolation they will turn to blogs to express it.
4. Most blogs are textually heavy and visually light. As a result, the home dial up connections leading to many seniors’ computers do not act as communications roadblocks.
5. As seniors travel along the path leading to different concerns and decisions, they need lots of new information. This can be information about travel, housing, medicine, financial planning, illness, physicians, government-funded programs, and much more. Blogs are wonderful tools for both the solicitation and sharing of information. When you consider that this need for information may coincide with seniors’ decreased mobility, you realize that blogging is doubly advantaged.
6. Young people have the attention span of wolves. They are always on the move, searching for the next new technology. Seniors are steady and faithful. As young people move on from blogging, seniors will stay true.
Now that we have considered why seniors will spend parts of their free afternoons blogging, what are the next steps for marketers seeking to connect with these armchair digitati through a sponsored blog? Following is a list of suggestions:
1. After auditing seniors’ information needs and interests, determine how you can satisfy them. Assembling a list of links to information rich websites is a good start.
2. Launch a blog that addresses these needs and interests. Before doing so, of course, you must first designate someone with the time and patience to write and monitor the blog. Remember to design the blog for senior eyes and sensibilities. This means no reverse, san serif or mice type.
3. Identify a collection of field hands who will post comments to the blog during the early days before it attracts an audience.
4. Recruit a group of experts to address areas of interest that dovetail with your audience’s information needs and your firm’s marketing goals. For example, a travel tour company can invite a travel expert to blog on the convenience of traveling with an organized tour.
5. Manage your blog with a firm; though gentle hand. Blogs are, I’m going to say it, blogocracies, and any audience will opt out if there are overt signs of blog control. They will say, you guessed it, “blaaaaah.”
6. If you have the resources, put together and field a search engine-marketing plan.
7. Direct traffic to your blog through tags at the end of conventional electronic and print media. Your blog can become an oversized virtual church basement to which you invite prospects and customers to meet over coffee and cake. (With all this talk about coffee and cake, I am planning a second career selling space on blog sites to caffeine and powdered sugar conglomerates.)
Before signing off, I would like to leave with a word of caution. Blogs are viral. Once you launch one, be prepared for both positive and negative posts from your audience. Oh, and don’t dunk.
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