You Post Like a Boomer

I claimed I could tell your age by the nature of your Facebook posts and an interesting thing happened, it pissed people off and they confirmed I was correct.

Trends in social media, Facebook in particular, have always peaked my interest and I believe they hold some keys as to how to present and share your project data. I’m not alone in this. Social network analytics is big business, though most people are unaware of just how big.

Project work requires everyone to be on the same page. Managing communication so that everyone can be on the same page at the same time is important and social network integration can help. Even allowing comments or email can help spread information within the organization.

More and more tools are integrating social sharing and information radiator technology for communication. Are there lesson from social media that help us tailor our efforts for information sharing? I believe there are.

I've observed that people 50 and over (maybe as young as 40+) favor re-posting rather than generating content when posting on social media.

At the same time, I've noticed that people under 40 tend to generate a lot of original content, however, that content is about them or their friends and only rarely about work or politics.

These are not hard and fast rules. When I first made these observations I thought I would catch a lot of flack and that people would claim I was wrong. An interesting thing happened. Not a single person has challenged me on the premise. However an ocean of people have objected to me pointing this out. I guess observing people’s nature is as taboo on Facebook as it is in person.

I get it. I basically said the equivalent of “old people have grey hair” and people agreed but they thought that by pointing this out I was going around saying, “you have grey hair: old!” They didn't like that.

What’s the practical application of this? Well, it’s no mystery that senior management at even the youngest of organization still tend to be … well, senior. And that your average “worker bee” tends to be … well, younger.

Therefor, it follows that if you’re creating information systems for teams to use for tracking and reporting (something I do on a regular basis), you should provide data intended for senior management in a re-postable and forward-able format. You should also allow the younger folks to be able to share and post “status updates” about their progress (I’m metaphorically calling this a “work selfie.”).

I believe if you incorporate these influences into your information and project management tools you give yourself a chance to get better traction and that all important social boost to your communication.