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A New Generation of Influencers

By Dennis Horan

In today's fast-paced digital world, the term "influencer" often conjures images of young, trendy individuals promoting the latest products. However, a new wave of influencers is emerging, and they're not your typical social media stars. Meet the grandfluencers: a group of individuals in their 70s and beyond who are captivating audiences with their unique perspectives, humor, and wisdom.  

Why Are Grandfluencers So Popular?

Several factors contribute to the rise of grandfluencers:

Authenticity: Grandfluencers offer a refreshing change from the often polished and curated content of younger influencers. Their genuine personalities and real-life experiences resonate with audiences seeking authenticity.  

Humor and Wit: Many grandfluencers possess a sharp sense of humor and a knack for storytelling. Their ability to find humor in everyday life and share relatable anecdotes has made them popular across generations.  

Wisdom and Experience: With decades of life experience, grandfluencers offer valuable insights and advice on topics ranging from relationships and family to health and wellness.

Nostalgia: For many younger viewers, grandfluencers evoke a sense of nostalgia and connection to a simpler time.  

How Grandfluencers Are Making an Impact

Grandfluencers are not just entertaining their followers; they're also making a significant impact on social media and popular culture. Some of the ways they're influencing their audiences include:  

Challenging Ageism: By demonstrating that age is just a number, grandfluencers are breaking down stereotypes and inspiring others to embrace their later years.  

Promoting Positive Aging: They showcase the many joys of aging, encouraging their followers to stay active, engaged, and curious.

Building Communities: Grandfluencers create supportive communities where people of all ages can connect and share their experiences.  

Collaborating with Brands: Many brands are recognizing the potential of grandfluencers and partnering with them to reach a wider audience.  

By Dennis Horan

For nonprofit organizations to improve their reach and expand their audience, it is important for them to have in place a social media plan that they can use to grow their following and gain donors. Their purpose along with their missions will be imperative to the focus of their branding. Their social media channels (Instagram, Facebook & YouTube) should show their following that they are in tune with their purpose and missions. However, the primary goal is to always fundraise, social media often gets overlooked as a way to grow their audience and find new donors, whether they are within the community or from outside the community. 

Taking a look at a local organization based out of Providence, Rhode Island named Beautiful Day  , their current following is mixed with followers from the non profit refugee community and other non profits within the Providence community.  Taking a look at their social media, they have some areas to improve in (followers, likes, and views), especially given what they do for the community, this is a non profit more people should be talking about.  The only way people will donate is if they know and see more about the organization.  

First, let’s take a look at their Instagram profile.  I chose this platform first because I believe this is where they could drastically improve the most.  Instagram is THE social media platform right now and it is a great place for non profits like Beautiful Day to shine a light on what they do within the community.  Currently they have 1.4k followers and as it might seem impressive given their size of the organization. I believe they could improve in this area.  Given the number of followers that they have, the number of likes on each post do not align with their amount of followers.  Combing through their posts about a month back, the most likes I’ve seen on a post was no higher than 37.  Most of their posts come across as advertisements for their products, rather than the work put in behind the product by the refugees.  It’s understandable as to why they have so many posts advertising their product, afterall, they do have a product to sell.  

What I would like to see from Beautiful Day regarding improvements to their Instagram page, videos and influencers. I believe their ads for the products come off a bit bland and conservative.  They could use an influencer's touch providing a testament to how good their product is.  Double that with more video presentations which could provide a creative touch to their feed. Video posts such as reels and stories could also create more engagement from their followers. This will allow them to track things like conversion rate which is an advanced metric, clickthrough rate which is a behavioral metric and their reach which is a channel metric.  If they can somehow improve their posts through my suggestions then I believe they can grow dramatically on the Instagram platform and by doing so they can gain more donors to their organization.  

Hello everyone, my name is Dennis Horan and I am back in college for the first time in 12 years. Life has brought me back to this point because I believe the only way for someone to grow, is to challenge themselves. So, that's how I arrived here on Tumblr. My first ever blog post on this social media site is ironically (?) for my social media communications class. In this very first post you read my views on social media and how I use it on a day to day basis. Hopefully in reading this, you will better understand who I am as a person and where I'm looking to grow through communications.

To start, I define social media as a tool used to network and express one's self on the internet. Kind of like a business card in a way but with more visuals.

However, I personally do not use social media as a form of networking. I mainly use it as a personal, well I don't know, journal I guess. I really only use two social media sites, they are Instagram and Threads. My posts on Instagram are usually sarcastic memes, artwork that I really like and pictures of my life during certain moments. On Threads I typically just talk about wrestling, food and the occasional post about a recent movie/TV show I just watched.