Social Networking - It's Not Just for Kids

Generally speaking, most trends online begin with the younger generations. Social Networking has to be the latest real online phenomenon in terms of people jumping on the bandwagon. Recently, I read an interesting statistic that adult users of social networking services outnumber children. Before you get too excited, there’s a couple caveats to this statistic. For the purposes of the article, an adult is anyone over 18, and certainly, the largest group representing the adults was the 18 to 24 year old contingent. Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 75% of the 18-24 group have a profile on at least one social networking site. While the 18-24year old age group isn’t exactly the primary target market for bed and breakfast businesses, there’s still good news.

According to Pew Internet, 57% of online adults between 25 and 34 years old have profiles on a social networking site. The numbers begin to drop off in the older age groups with 30% of online adults between 35 to 44, 19% of users between 45 and 54 and only 10% of adults over 65 have social networking profiles.

Don’t give up on your Facebook or Linked in profiles just yet. Consider the collective numbers represented here. As the social networking phenomenon develops and matures, the numbers will increase up the ladder. As the younger generations increase in number, they inevitably pass on the trends to their parents, colleagues, etc. Social networking has made keeping in touch so easy, many of the users between 25 and 45 are getting their parents signed up with profiles as a way to show them pictures of the kids, vacations and just keeping in touch.

What’s this mean for the innkeeper? Social networking can be used as a significant advantage with a well thought out campaign. By getting creative, your business name and photographs can be proliferated to many potential guests in a very short period of time. If you are not familiar with a social networking site like Facebook, consider talking to someone who is very knowledgeable. Here at Fresnel Marketing, we specialize in not only helping innkeepers set up a campaign, but helping them fully understand how to do it themselves.

The bottom line is, don’t underestimate the power of social networking. Will it last forever? Maybe, maybe not. But don’t pass up this opportunity to get visibility to your inn through these very qualified referrals. There are millions of users in your target demographic and the creative innkeepers will draw in more guests with a creative marketing campaign through this fast growing phenomenon.