No longer dominated by college-age consumers, ads for your hospital on Facebook can be effective in reaching a more mature audience.

Service lines that traditionally target the 55 plus market including prostate and colorectal cancer, heart attack, osteo and stroke can be effectively promoted on social medium Facebook. In fact, the 55 plus segment saw the largest increase of usage so far this year. According to istrategylabs the number of Facebook users over age 55 increased more than 500% (from nearly one million to 5.8 million) from January 4, 2009 until July 4, 2009.

The 35-54 age segment also had some pretty significant usage increases. During the same time period as above, according to istrategylabs, Facebook users between 35 and 54 increased 200%. While the percentage is not as impressive as the 55 plus audience, the numbers are impressive when you consider that this percentage represents 20 million users compared to 7 million as of January.  Perfect audience to receive ads for your hospital’s branding campaign, colorectal or breast screening, spine center, etc.

Some other insights in the same report:

• The south has the largest growing metro – Atlanta had a 142% increase.
• Almost 17% fewer high school students are using Facebook compared to January of this year.
• Nearly 55% of Facebook users are female.
• Whether or not a user is a college graduate is difficult to determine as almost 80% of the users did not indicate their education level on their profile.

This shift in usage also means that Facebook eventually may no longer be the obvious choice for your hospital’s traditionally younger-skewed service lines.

According to istrategy, there was a decrease in college age users on Facebook of almost 22%. If the trend continues, young women may no longer be an obvious demographic to target on Facebook for your hospital’s obstetric services. Instead grandmother may be a better choice to target for her osteo health.