Searching for comparable European data to the Rapleaf study about gender and age in social media usage I haven’t been successful yet. But googling my way through the web I found this ongoing study from universal McCann about how the worldwide usage of social media has developed druing the last two years.
One of the things to learn from this study is the fact that Germany is one of the countries that is only starting to become convinced of the advantages of social media.
I noticed indeed that many smaller companies in Germany, artists or associations are still struggling to optimize their sender-focussed web1.0 website (if they have a serious one at all). Most of them don’t have or don’t want to spend the time to manage their activities on the web themselves.
So how could you convince someone with inhibitions to the medium and who says they don’t have the time to blog or be active on social media at all?
These activitities only make sense if you interact regularly and in person there (or if at least you have a good ghostwriter). Of course I can set up blogs and profiles for someone and post information there like on their regular website. But I cannot provide the personal interaction with the sender.
Still you could say: go for clients who don’t have these inhibitions. Sure. But those who haven’t even discovered their possibilities yet are the most challenging, I think. And don’t forget: I’m quite new to social media myself too!
Btw. Chris Brogan, with whom I had an interesting short email conversation yesterday, summed up the hints he had given me in a blog today listing his articles about social media starter moves.
Hello Nette,
if you want to convince people to take the time to present themselves on social media, you often have convince them to present themselves at all.
With their common websites act as if making an advert for what they want to tell, to sell or whatever. They dont’t show something of themselves (perhaps a photo, but thats all). On social media people have to tell something about themselves if they want to be taken serious.
Many people don’t think, that this is a good idea, because they have a negative view on social media. For many people “social media” stands for things like “Second life”or similar crap, where many loosers flee off their sad reality and try to be another person.
Or they hear about all the blogs where people torture their readers with boring stories about their boring lifes and tell all the things nobody wants to hear.
So, if you want to convince people to act on social media you have to convince them that there is more than wasting time.
Thomas