6 Tips For Crafting Content That Resonates With Millennials What do millennials think of your content?
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What do millennials think of your content? If your first reaction to that question is "who cares" it's time for an attitude adjustment. Millennials are the largest living generation, and have enormous influence and spending power. By 2018, millennial will eclipse Baby Boomers in spending power and have more spending power than any other generation. The sooner that you commit yourself to producing content that they like, the sooner you can start tapping into their unprecedented influence and buying power. The following six tips will help.
Be sincere
Millennials grew up in the digital age, so they're very savvy and can quickly spot a false promise. They greet salesy language and other traditional marketing techniques with rolled eyes and yawns of boredom. What millennials crave is authenticity. Create content that reflects your ideals. Be clear and unwavering about your brand's stances. Be forthcoming about potential problems. Whatever you do, don't try to pull the wool over their eyes. There's a growing list of brands whose lack of authenticity have come back to bite them.
Forge an emotional bond
Your content will pique millennials' interest when it triggers an emotional response. There's a fine line to walk here, though, as your content shouldn't be cheesy or sentimental. Instead, figure out your target audience's values and personality traits, and use that information to inform the tone and style of your content. The goal here is to establish a personal connection with your audience and to elicit emotional responses. By understanding your target demographic well, producing content that reflects its values and beliefs will be much easier.
Demonstrate social responsibility
Millennials care deeply about social issues. According to the American Marketing Association, 66% of millennials are more likely to engage with companies when issues of social responsibility are brought to the forefront and 70% of them prefer to do business with brands that support causes they care about. A 2014 Nielson report shows millennials care most about family, philanthropy, society, environment and community but you still need to localize this to your specific industry. Find out which causes your target audience cares about the most, take steps to support those causes, and then find ways to show your audience that you actively care about such causes through the content that you produce.
Share cutting edge information
Millennials are the most educated generation in American history with over 63% of them having a Bachelor's Degree. They love staying in the know and are always looking for ways to improve themselves, so they devour content that is educational and informative regarding the topics that they care about the most. They tend to be early adopters for this very reason and are usually among the first to try new gizmos and technologies. The success of Pokémon GO, for instance, is largely thanks to its early adoption by millennials who constitute 83% of its players. Create content that helps millennials learn and grow. Establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and strive to be among the first to report on latest news to attract millennials who are hungry for timely, accurate information.
Entertain them
Millennials love to be entertained and are drawn to content that's fast-paced, easily digestible and funny. Facebook video publisher UNILAD understands this and leverages it to reach an audience of one billion people every week. If your brand pushes content with stodgy, serious affectations, you're likely to turn off millennials. That's not to say that all your content should be slapstick in nature. It just means that you should feel free to throw in some funny asides from time to time. When the situation warrants it, go ahead and be flat-out funny. This is easier to do on video, but there are lots of ways to breathe some comedy into virtually any type of content.
Get them in on the act
Millennials love and trust user-generated content. They enjoy producing it themselves and seeing what other users have to say. If you haven't yet, find ways to encourage users to generate content for you. Roundup posts work well. Social media contests work well too, as they allow users to be creative and don't require a major time investment. As an added bonus, user-generated content is a fast, affordable way to expand your content-producing horizons and to get your brand name out there to even broader audiences.
