Social media usage by older Americans has grown significantly, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

The report reveals that 35% of US adults over the age of 65 are now using social media – that’s an increase of 24% since 2010.

Further, 77% of US adults aged 30-49 are using social media. This is great news for businesses as it means more and more of their prospects and customers are on social. With social media scheduling tool and software, it is much easier for marketers to plan their posts well ahead of time. This means they can visually plan, create and directly publish the scheduled content from one platform to all their social media profiles. And with less help, social media delivers messages and offers in uniquely engaging, tightly targeted, and cost-effective ways. But then businesses need to look at various social media growth apps like Kicksta and Growthoid review before they decide on something for their growth.

Other highlights from the Report?

• Adults from higher income households are more likely to be social media users. 78% of US adults who earn more than $75,000 per year are social media users, compared to 56% of adults who make less than $30,000 per year.
• Gender does not make a difference in social media usage. 68% of US women are social media users, compared to 62% of men. Pew observes that this difference is statistically insignificant.
• Younger adults have the highest penetration of social media usage. 90% of US adults ages 18-29 now use social media, up from 12% in 2005.
• Growth of social media users of those ages 50-64 has largely remained flat. Slightly more than half of US adults in that age bracket are social media users, unchanged from two years ago.

These statistics are particularly good news for small businesses whose marketing budgets tend to be tighter.

Why? Traditional marketing media are “pay to play”. In other words, you’re going to pay $X for a mailing, newspaper add or radio or TV commercial irrespective of how many people see/hear it.

Social, on the other hand, is “pay for performance”. That means that if you don’t get the desired action (i.e., click, inquire, file out a form, request a white paper, etc.) you don’t pay a penny. Though this depends if you are paying for advertising on the platform or directly posting on the platform yourself and using a growth service like TokUpgrade (See this TokUpgrade review verdict for more information) to attract an audience.

If your business uses its own social media account to post then the cost is the time spent taking any photographs and the time taken to post it. Many different platforms allow you to promote posts to users that aren’t already subscribed to your posts. Again this is largely pay for performance; no engagement? No cost?

All in all social media can provide many different opportunities for you to advertise to new audiences, generate new leads, and build a solid foundation of regular customers. Your strategy will largely depend on your business and what you want from the platform but it is a marketing tool you should definitely consider using.

Want to learn more about how social media can help drive business results for your company?

Send us an email to SMASupport@Engage121.com and one of our social media specialists will contact you.