Tuesday, September 18, 2018

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MILLENNIALS

MILLENNIALS | HOW TO REACH YOUR AUDIENCE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

  One of the main advantages of social media for businesses is that it enables you to interact with your potential and existing customers. Going through the tweets and Facebook status updates that are posted by your customers gives you insights into what they need. This is important for helping your company formulate marketing strategies that address their needs. Social media makes the process of providing and receiving feedback easier. If your customers have concerns with what your company offers, they can let you know in a timely manner. Social media gives clients a convenient and accessible way to express what they feel and gives businesses a chance to respond. With such platforms, businesses are able to monitor complaints and ensure their customers that their problems will be coped with. Social networks provide the opportunity to start a conversation with your consumers and deliver the right message to the right individual. To market towards multiple demographics takes great powers of empathy – and a deep knowledge of how different types of people interact with the digital world. You need to know how different demographics use digital, and how they experience it. Today, we will have a look at millenials: who are they? What do they like? What can we do?

MILLENIALS: HOW ARE THEY?

 
  In October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials "the next great generation," which is funny. They define the group as "as those born in 1982 and approximately the 20 years thereafter." In 2012, they affixed the end point as 2004.

Curiosity

Millennials are a curious generation. They are excited to learn new skills, and are willing to invest the time in becoming better employees. Just take a look at the trillion-plus dollars in student loan debt millennials are willing to take on in order to expand their minds.

Tech-savvy

We are all surrounded by technology and millennials spend 5-10 hours a day consuming copious amount of online content. So creating a brand experience within this digital world with relevant content is the first step in captivating this generation.

Advice-Seekers

Millennials unfortunately don’t trust a brand’s message. When deciding what to purchase, this demographic seeks opinions of friends, family members, or even strangers before making purchasing decisions. It’s important to rebuild trust with relevant content and user-generated content.

MILLENNIALS: MARKETING PREFERENCES

According to Geneca, millennials are all about experiences. Everything we do, buy, or eat, all stems from the experience we get from it (FYI this is why we post everything we do on social media-we like to share our experiences with others). So, if you want to be noticed by the millennial group, interact with us by creating an experience for us! A great way to gain brand recognition with millennials is to have live events that we can be a part of. 78% of millennials are more likely to follow or take part in a brand when the company puts effort into implementing face-to-face interactions. For example, Dove engaged their audience by putting on experiential marketing for their ‘Choose Beautiful Campaign’, and Coca-Cola connected with millennials through their ‘Coke Hug Me’ campaign, which advertised a free coke to anyone that hugged a vending machine.  
  Millennials need to see your company as a professional industry with stability and growth potential, but if we have learned anything about this generation, it is that they want to love and have fun with what they do. Think about it this way, give your company the mullet haircut! Just like the mullet, business in the front and party in the back, you want your company to also have a fun/party side! By having a presence on Snapchat and Instagram, you can connect and show millions of millennials what your company can truly offer them. Almost half of the Snapchat audience are millennials. They consume about 30 minutes of content every day on Snapchat. This will give you a chance to interact with millennials by capturing events, sharing different promotions, or giving your followers an exclusive sneak peek behind the scenes of your culture.

FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM OR MAYBE YOUTUBE?

Useful Insights by MarketingProfs.com 

Consumers see social media as creating more accountability for brands in a number of ways, including by uncovering unfair treatment (80%), giving consumers power (75%), encouraging transparency (70%), amplifying issues (65%) and helping employees share experiences (55%). Although Facebook is the most popular social network across generations, it is not as dominant with younger people as it is with older ones, according to recent research from Sprout Social. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in January 2017 of 1,000 Millennials (age 18-34), Gen Xers (age 34-54), and Baby Boomers (age 55+) in the United States. Some of 65% of Gen Xers as well as Baby Boomers say Facebook is their favorite social network. Facebook also ranks as the most popular social network with Millennials (33% of them cite it as their favorite). However, Instagram (22% of Millennials rank it as their favorite) and Snapchat (16%) have much more Millennial fans than they do older ones.  
  The youngest set of Millennials surveyed (age 18-24) rank Instagram as their top network (25% cite it as their favorite), just ahead of Facebook (24%) and Snapchat (23%). Respondents across all three generations are more likely to pick YouTube as their favorite social network over Twitter or Pinterest.

MILLENNIALS: WHAT CAN WE DO?

If your small business isn’t on a social media platform, you will need to be on one to market millennials. In fact, we’d recommend you get on more than one platform. Your social media presence is where your business can easily connect with your target audience. It’s where they spend a large portion of the day and where they go for information. Millennials grew up always being connected and building relationships with people through social networks. So, when they look for a brand or business to buy a product from they are also looking to build a relationship with that business. Insightful posts, product recommendations, useful information about your business and your product will help your brand build that important relationship. When reviewing your social media accounts in order to attract millennials to your business make sure you have a clear and developed brand personality. Express your personality by posting interesting and engaging information on your social accounts multiple times a week. Post videos of your product in use or testimonials on how people (particularly other millennials) have benefited your business. Also, engage with your customers, to show millennials coming to your pages that you can form a relationship. Engagement consists of answering your followers’ comments, sharing their posts, and asking questions to welcome feedback.  
 

CONCLUSION

Besides knowing what social networks your audience uses, it is also helpful to discover their interests outside of the industry that you are serving. This used to be a very difficult thing to do, but now that everybody’s interests are plastered all over social media, as well as the sites that they frequent, the data is there if someone is aggregating it. Fortunately, Google Analytics makes the data pretty easily available by enabling their demographics feature. Would you want Blueninja.io help you with Social Media Marketing? Give us a call anytime! The highly-qualified team of Blueninja.io provides an unforgettable experience for businesses and their clients through innovative digital solutions. Website design & Mobile Development, Web Application Development services, E-commerce web systems, PWA System Development, SEO, Google Adwords and Social Media Marketing are just a small part of a wide service portfolio, opening doors to enormous opportunities for your business success. Stay connected with Blueninja.io and be the first who will read our next article!  

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