I share a lot of the same characteristics with my parents, especially the desire to always be learning new things. For as long as I can remember, my dad has been building an HO scale train platform (to the left is a picture of one section), but once he retired it really grew with the addition of an amusement park, campground and even a mountain rescue complete with helicopter hanging from the ceiling. You can see my whole photo set of his layout here.
Also, upon retirement my dad embraced the Internet, but not in the way that you may think. He is strictly a consumer of content with no accounts to be found anywhere online. This isn’t unusual, but it is something we need to keep in mind as we create content for social media and look at measurement numbers. We know not to rely on follower numbers and my dad is a great example of why.
I tout blogs as one of the most important pieces of your overall social media strategy and my dad is one of the reasons. He is always searching for how to accomplish something whether it is for his train platform, a DIY fountain/pond for the front yard or remote control car. If you are a hobby store, my dad is your best friend. If you are blogging on the topic, my dad will find you and consume your content, but you will probably never know because he will not comment and he will not shop online. However, if you have a local bricks and mortar store, he will probably walk through your doors and spend money. Blogs reach those that are not active in social media and rank high on search engines.
His social media consumerism goes beyond blogs too. Namely with Twitter and YouTube. Yes, Twitter. He does not have a Twitter account and probably has never been to Twitter.com, but he watches conversations that take place on Twitter. My dad is a NASCAR fan and more specifically a Matt Kenseth fan. On the Matt Kenseth website, they display tweets from the Fan Club account which contains a lot of replies and retweets. During a race, my dad keeps an eye on it to see what is going on with Matt. No way to track that follower…
Don’t forget about your stealth consumers. They will find you and your information through searches, but will never follow, like, share or engage, but this doesn’t make them any less important of a consumer. They will convert this into sales and providing them with an easy way to consume your content goes a long way.