Zoomers

Where grown-ups make friends.

Zoomers.ca is a branded ZoomerMedia social network where I developed its social content strategy.

The strategy involved producing traffic-generating daily digital content that also furthered the site’s online community initiatives targeting the Canadian 45+.

Below are the highlights (with accompanying relevant visuals):

The Guess Who? Daily Teaser. Each morning, a now or then photo of a face that may or may not be familiar to members was posted in the site’s popular photos section. This link would be then shared on the Facebook page, and members there were encouraged to click onto the link for the three clues. Guesses throughout the day as to who the face might be were posted on Facebook and Zoomers.ca. At the end of the day, the answer (with a before and after image) was posted.

Jane Fonda’s 27 Quick & Dirty Quotes About 70+ Sex. When Jane Fonda published her Prime Time self-help book, much media attention was given towards its frank attitude regarding sex and aging. At a time when STI’s amongst the baby boomers and seniors are on the rise, this piece engaged our predominantly female membership base in a conversation around sexual health and empowerment.

Zoomers on Facebook Captions. Once a week, a Zoomers.ca user-generated image was featured on the Facebook page where members were encouraged to comment with a suggested caption. Taking into consideration the most ‘likes’ each submission gets, the most popular amongst Facebook Zoomers was posted as an image macro on Zoomers.ca every Friday (as well as featured in the site’s newsletter).

Should This B.C. Woman Have The Right To Die?. Part of Zoomers.ca’s appeal to its active membership was an engaging and accesible forum where they could discuss and debate the various angles on hot button news & health issues that directly related to their experiences, like a news of the day talking point regarding a debilitatingly ill sixtysomething Canadian woman right to an assisted suicide, or a weird found internet item on the Euthanasia Coaster’s ability to make the right to death “fun”.

Jack Nicholson’s 74th: 74 Hot Pictures. A service-driven editorial item that celebrated the birthday milestones of Zoomer icons as well as operated as a meditation on the image-based appraisals we make regarding the youth and twilight of our celebrity culture. (Other icons featured included Julie Christie, Diana Ross, Lauren Bacall & Richard Gere.)

Writer Wednesday. When our site received a mass migration of bloggers from Open Salon, a weekly blog writing initiative was hatched to encourage and reward the great content created by this community of writers, as well as package their works in a friendly promotional way to our larger community. Every Friday, a prompt is issued with a theme. The following Wednesday, the pieces are rounded up and featured in the newsletter. (And one of them ends up being featured on the Facebook page.)

7 Inspiring Jack Layton Quotes. When former NDP Leader Jack Layton died, his death hit the Canadian 45+ hard as a man who succeeded in coming across as a values-driven politician who was “one of their own”. The images — created in collaboration with Steph Parrott — went viral, and continue to be share online long after Layton’s death.