Matt closes the week on a Business Insider piece with a counterintuitive lesson. Research from Morning Consult (run for Business Insider) and Edelman shows a big generational split on influencers: only about 31% of boomers trust influencer recommendations, versus roughly 62% of Gen Z and 64% of millennials, and only about a quarter of boomers follow content creators at all, compared to the vast majority of younger people. Boomers are also more likely to say they trust influencers less than they used to, have never bought anything on a recommendation, and find the content annoying. Matt, a self-described forgotten Gen Xer, can relate, though the lawyer in him wants to pin down what we even mean by “influencer.” He means the professional kind, the person whose whole business is taking pictures of themselves and building a following to tell you what to buy (think the LinkedIn influencer whose entire business is teaching you how to make money on LinkedIn, a bit of a closed loop).
Here’s why the “problem” is actually an opportunity. Boomers account for about 42% of spending among affluent US households (Visa), yet marketers pour tens of billions into creator partnerships aimed at much younger audiences. Some agencies even report stronger conversion from older, more experienced creators, while brands stay reluctant to use them. So two takeaways. First, don’t sleep on the boomers, depending on your business, there’s a whole market of healthy, financially capable people, often on their second or third career and moving to the next thing, that service businesses ignore at their own expense. Second, invest in real relationships. Matt’s clients range from Gen Z to boomers, and his advice is the same to all of them: don’t judge yourself against social media influencers. Your opportunity is to build trust the slower way, show up in person and online, do the one-on-ones, sow into the soil and fertilize it for real, and build a loyal community. With so much nonsense flooding social media, the differentiator is simple: don’t be nonsense. His questions for the weekend: who do you actually follow, does the word “influencer” even matter to you, and what’s your honest relationship with all of it?
