Kitchen & Bath Magazine

When i sit down to write this column every quarter, I often start writing about one thing and end up writing about something completely different.... I have the kind of brain that is like a hummingbird flitting from one thought to another, always in search of a different source of nectar. Some people refer to that as Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD, but I prefer to think of it as being highly creative. So anyway...

I was ruminating on ageism and how it affects the design business. That got me to thinking about design shows. In so many cases, design TV hosts are under 30 and, while they are no doubt talented and creative, I often wonder if viewers with the disposable income to put toward design and renovation can really relate to people with so little professional experience.  It’s no revelation that our society is obsessed with remaining young and that we’ve made youth cooler than wisdom. Well, while trying to decide what tack I was going to take for the column, I found myself doing the digital equivalent of twiddling my pencil while staring off into space: I signed onto my Twitter account and sent a tweet.

Being a relative newbie to social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, I’ve only recently started to learn the lingo, which seems like a language created by kids to confound their parents — kind of like the Pig Latin of my day. It wasn’t so long ago that I began to use e-mail as a daily communication tool (a bloodless form of communication, 
I thought), so as little as a year ago, the thought of caring about sites like Facebook 
or Twitter was as alien as a walk on Mars.

Indeed, Facebook was not originally created for gracefully aging people like me; it was developed by a  college kid (who is now a “bazillionaire” as a result) as a way for other college kids to stay in touch with each other.  According to my very knowledgeable teenage son, young kids are using it to emulate their cooler older siblings. Talking to my friends, 
I know that many adults who are now regular users, initially joined social sites like Facebook as a way to see what their kids were up to, or to find out what the fuss was about. But Facebook has become an increasingly important way to network with professional colleagues and to market businesses and books. I believe, for the entrepreneur, it will replace e-mail as a serious and effective marketing tool.

LinkedIn, the social media site for the business community, was developed to separate the kids from the serious business networkers. However, in my mind, if e-mail is bloodless, LinkedIn is positively soulless with little communication between members beyond the initial invitation to join a contact list.

But whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, I believe small business will suffer if they don’t get with the social media programs, much like a design business operating without CAD is marked for extinction. And even though Twitter was tailor-made for the brain that can’t focus for more than 140 characters at a stretch, I’ve seen some very interesting marketing going on there.

Scoff all you like, but the population’s attention span is decreasing at an alarming rate and is bored by conventional marketing tools, so we’re going to have to find a way to get our prospects’ attention faster and more creatively than ever before. The old way of marketing and advertising is very shortly going to be a waste receptacle for those who have too much money to burn.  So whether Facebook and Twitter seem like kid stuff now, you’d better climb aboard before you miss the boat entirely. 
Well, it’s been great chatting, but I feel a tweet coming on, so follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/sieguzi).  It’ll keep you young. ckb

Robin Siegerman is the president of Sieguzi Interior Designs Inc. Catering to other design professionals and builders, the Sieguzi Custom Cabinetry division provides fine cabinetry for every room in the home.  She can be reached at robin.sieguzi@bellnet.ca.

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