Daily Dose of social media: Baby Boomers embracing social media & blogs

Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus — Baby boomers are the fastest growing segment of social networking users. So, if you think you can ignore social media because you think only high school and college students use social media, think again. Yes, it is true that social media is still much more popular with younger generations, but Boomers have shown a willingness to embrace social media and blogging.

There has been a belief that older people would stick with newspapers over the Web. Boomers are set to retire and become that older generation, and Boomers don’t appear like they’ll be on the sidelines watching the Web go by. Here are some other interesting tidbits from this post:

According to the study, baby boomers…

• Increased reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67 percent year over year; nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent)
• Posted a 59 percent increase in using social networking sites—more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)

iList Micro: Create and Browse Classified Ads Without Ever Leaving Twitter — This is the kind of innovative idea that newspapers should try if they are seriously interested in taking back classifieds:

iList, the classifieds site for instantly broadcasting your listing to your friends across your favorite social sites, has just made itself incredibly useful to TwitterTwitter reviewsTwitter reviews users who hate to go anywhere else with iList Micro.

With iList Micro now all you have to do to create a classified listing is tweet what you are offering and use the hashtag #ihave in your tweet. Likewise, you can tweet that you’re interested in something by using the hashtag #iwant. Your #ihave and #iwant tweets will automatically get picked up by iList and added to their microlisting site, where anyone can search from the available assortment of twittered classified ads.

Plus, if you never want to leave Twitter, you don’t have to. Just follow @microilist to have iList do the classifieds work for you. They scour #ihave and #iwant tweets to find a match for your specific Twitter inquiry and direct message you with info on the matched Twitter user.

Twitter Tweaks Its Title Tags For Better Google Juice – Notice your Twitter feed showing up a lot higher in Google today? It’s no coincidence. Twitter made a simple title tag tweak and received a massive SEO bump from Google.

The old title tag for my account looked like this, “twitter.com/jiconoclast.” Not exactly good for SEO. Nowhere in that title tag did you find my name.

This is what the new title tag looks like, “Patrick Thornton (jiconoclast) on Twitter.” This simple change vaulted my Twitter feed to the No. 2 search result for the search Pat Thornton on Google, just behind my personal site.

This underscore, yet again, how simple changes can have a profound impact on SEO and search results. Better SEO means your content shows up higher in search results. Showing up higher means more page views.

There is a caveat, however. Your Twitter account is now showing up really high in Google searches for your name (many of you will have your Twitter accounts being the No. 1 result). If your account is filled with banality, it may hurt you when it comes to future employment.

Just keep in mind that what you say on Twitter is easily searchable, and if potential employers Google your name, they’ll find your Twitter account. This could be great or really bad. Your move.