Get Used to it Dad; Learn It or Get Left Behind

For the longest time, I didn’t “get” text messaging. It just seems easier to push seven buttons on the phone and actually SPEAK to someone. When I expressed this sentiment to my 15 year old son, I got the “teenager eye roll” and my son says, ‘Get used to it Dad. Learn it or get left behind.”

I have two teenagers. Between them, they send and receive well over 2,000 text messages a month (thank God for the unlimited plan!). Both my kids can type a text message with one thumb that rivals “War and Peace” in length.

Me? I can sort of stumble through sending a text message. My kids laugh when they see me do it. It takes me 5 minutes to text, “What’s for dinner?” to my wife. (It takes her slightly less time to text back, “You’re on your own”…)

Over the last couple of months, I’ve slowly come to accept the fact that text messaging is pretty cool, and it’s actually not a bad way to communicate in certain situations.

Our main web site has the capability to send me text/SMS messages (I still don’t know the difference, if any, between the two) when a prospect triggers certain activities on the site. It’s a fantastic tool to let me know when a site visitor is asking or looking for something. Several times I’ve been able to immediately respond to a web site prospect. People like that. I like that.

I now find myself sending text messages not just to the kids, but to the wife, clients, and friends. There ARE times when all I need to do is say or ask something that only takes a few words. It really is more efficient sometimes than placing an actual call.

I know teens spend half their lives texting. There’s a whole language developing around texting (that I’m slowly learning). I figured that being a 46 year old sending text messages puts me on the bleeding edge of communication technology. But then I stumbled across this blog that reports the fastest growing group of text messagers in the U.S. is adults age 45 - 64. This demographic grew about seven times as fast as kids under the age of 18. So I guess I’m not alone.

There is more interesting data on the Mobivity.com blog. Some of these numbers are staggering:

• 936 billion SMS messages were sent in 2005 (world wide). That number is expected to hit 2.3 trillion by 2010. That’s a boatload of communication happening…
• Users in the UK sent over 3.8 billion text messages in the month of October. That’s 100 million more than the previous record, which was September.

Mobivity.com is a company that specializes in “Do It Yourself Mobile Marketing” using text messaging.  (Here’s their page for real estate agents. I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan to look into it.)

Think about these numbers folks. If you aren’t using text messages in your business (be it real estate or just about anything else), you may be missing out on a significant chunk of the market.

CUL8R! (See you later!)

Technorati Tags: Mobivity, SMS, text messaging, texting

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