Changing Perceptions About Aging Through Shares and Engagement

As part of my work with AARP, I spent one year working on the CEO’s initiative called Disrupt Aging. The concept was that by challenging outdated beliefs about aging, the initiative could turn conversations and ideas around getting older into something more positive.

 The Challenge

The challenge was to engage a younger and broader audience in a conversation about ageism and a new paradigm of aging.

What We Did

Audience Identification

On the social front, we were tasked with building an audience that was going to lead the conversation on social platforms, particularly Facebook. Our primary focus was women who had an activist mindset. We translated this into women between the ages of 39-54 who were engaged with more progressive political issues on social media - people who were sharing petitions and politically oriented messages with their friends. Our theory was that women who cared about racism and sexism would also care about another ism - ageism.

Paid Strategy

Our paid strategy focused on women who were interested in pages that were politically oriented and leaned progressive - everything from the ACLU to HuffPost Women, as well as the NAACP and United We Dream. We wanted to make sure to reach multicultural audiences who could understand the intersectionality of ageism with other issues. We set the age range from 39-54, knowing that an organization geared to those 50 and over might not have brand permission to engage younger audiences. We also segmented the audiences into three age brackets so we could trace performance among the age groups to see if younger cohorts reacted to the message and the messenger in the same way as the older audiences.

Content Strategy

Our content strategy focused on creating content that would get people engaging beyond likes and loves. We wanted the audience to share, serving as messengers of the Disrupt Aging message. To meet that objective, our content strategy focused on easy to share pieces. It included quote cards that focused on positive ideas about aging as well as provocative third-party content from sources see as friendly and creditable to the core audience that also conveyed our message. We also developed video content that would challenge outdated beliefs about aging, focusing on ideas about fatherhood and coloring your hair. We also developed a series of call-to-action question prompts that would engage the audience in discussions about ageist behavior in society.

Choosing Measurements of success

Because we were focused on how much the message was getting out there, our measurements of success focused on increasing the number of organic shares and comments. These were two indicators of the deeper engagement we were seeking. We focused on organic engagement because we wanted to see if our paid efforts would pay off and build an organic audience over time.

What Happened

Between January and September 2016 and January and September 2017, organic comments increased 94%, organic shares rose 20% and overall organic engagement saw a 32% lift. Behind the numbers, we also saw a huge number of highly engaged comments in response to question prompts that focused on key components in discussions about age. For example, one question prompt asked if they preferred to keep their hair grey or to color it. Another asked people to share the most ageist thing someone had said to them. These questions both got people to think about instances in their own lives where age impacted them and it got them to share those with others.