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As a millennial, I am constantly bombarded with marketing content. And for good reason. In addition to being expert multitaskers, having extremely short attention spans, and our skepticism for traditional advertising tactics, millennials, as a group, are:
How do you take this information and use it to your advantage? Here are three simple guidelines that are important to consider when creating a social media strategy targeting this group.
#1 – Content should be timely
Millennials are very sensitive to the timeliness of the content they see. Since we are constantly plugged into social media through our phones, it is important to be flexible enough to react to current events in a timely manner if you wish to use them in your strategy.
If a company waits even a couple of hours too long to react to an event, they missed an opportunity to be noticed by a massive number of possible consumers and instead are brushed off for being late to the game. As important as it is to have a consistent schedule for your social media posts, you shouldn’t stress about going off schedule if an event or other happening comes up that might be relevant to your brand that you want to talk about.
Bottom line, if you cannot take advantage of a current event while it’s still fresh, don’t bother at all.
#2 -Let your audience speak for themselves
Because millennials are a very skeptical group, we have an innate sense of knowing when we are being marketed to. This is why social media and non-traditional content marketing works better with us than blatant advertising. We crave meaningful interaction with companies and brands instead of simply receiving a lecture.
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User Generated Content
One terrific approach used to help your audience tell their own story is to focus on gathering content that will help create a dialog between you and your audience. Posting User Generated Content (UGC) is a great way to both encourage interaction and to include the voice of your targeted audience in your campaigns.
Ask your followers to tweet a specific hashtag that you come up with, or post a picture of themselves using your product or service on Instagram. These types of posts will boost engagement and provide you with plenty of quality content to share over your social media platforms.
#3 – Content should be useful and easy to engage with
The goal of your social media presence is to get your message out to as many people as possible, and your current followers are an extremely important part in spreading that message. Your fans aren’t going to share your content if it is not valuable or entertaining to them at all. Even brands that might be considered “boring” have come up with unique social media strategies that are able to capture and keep the attention of their audience.
Engaging media
One brand that does a great job blending content that is both useful and engaging is Netflix. Netflix shares the information their audience needs to know and presents that information in a meaningful way that encourages interaction. The benefit for their followers is twofold.
- They can learn what shows and movies are available on Netflix at any given time. – Netflix generally only shares content related to movies and shows that are currently available (or soon to be available) for streaming.
- They can comment on and share clips of media they enjoy. – There’s little millennials enjoy more than to talk about with their friends than what they are currently watching, or what they plan to watch in the future.
Successful social media strategy should benefit both your company and the consumer by broadcasting your marketing message and entertaining your audience at the same time. This will increase your engagement rate and create a sense of trust between you and your followers. Try out some of these tips for yourself and see if you notice better engagement with your millennial followers!