“Brief, but meaningful.” We asked one of younger staffers to reflect
on how small businesses could reach her generation – the Millennials – through social media and here’s
her advice. Quite sage, we think, for
one so young!
According to Hilary:
Convincing anyone in this day and age to
switch brands or invest in an unfamiliar brand seems next to impossible, if
only because of the sheer volume of advertisements and marketing schemes being
deployed through every form of media. Eventually, potential customers become
desensitized to the myriad internet pop-ups, Facebook sidebar ads, and even
television commercials. Ads in periodicals are really only effective in fashion
and cosmetic magazines, and good luck trying to reach anyone under the age of
forty with newspaper ads!
For the current generation of high school
and college students, as well as recent grads and young professionals, one
thing almost never fails to grab our attention: Facebook notifications. Direct
interaction with our Facebook profiles, either through friends’ tagged statuses
and photos, wall posts, and messages take top priority for our attention and
engagement. If a friend asks us to “like” a brand or artist page on Facebook,
we’re more likely to do it than if a sidebar ad tells us to do the same thing.
But here’s the big question:
What does it mean to “like” a page on
Facebook?
Like all social interactions, one person’s
intentions behind “liking” something may be entirely different from someone
else’s. For example, I “like” over forty restaurants and retail stores on
Facebook, only a handful of which I frequent with any sort of regularity.
“Liking” a page on Facebook transmits all of that page’s status updates into
the “liker’s” news feed, but who actually has time to read all of those
statuses?
Some small businesses are taking a fresh
tack in attempting to reach their target demographics: hiring brand ambassadors
with an existing network of potential customers and a working knowledge of
social networking sites– in other words, college students and recent graduates.
This kind of advertising almost doesn’t feel like advertising at all for the
consumers, who are seeing personal endorsements from friends and people they
trust rather than flashy sidebar ads.
On the subject of hiring recent college
graduates, it seems sites like LinkedIn definitely have a place, but more as a
focal point of career networking and news updates rather than job hunting. On
the whole, students still seem to be actively seeking jobs in more familiar
forums, such as on-site career fairs at their universities, websites like USA
JOBS, or direct networking with friends or family in a given professional
field.
There is one other place millennials are
finding career information: Twitter. Far from being just a sounding board for
celebrities, Twitter is also used by working professionals to discuss upcoming
projects and important advice and tips for people in the field as well as those
interested in it. For example, I am interested in a career in screenwriting, so
I located several of my favorite screenwriters on Twitter and started following
their accounts, gaining insight into what kinds of projects they take on, what
kinds of other industry professionals they work in direct contact with, and
generally learning about the various challenges and benefits of working in that
field. If you know someone in your chosen field that has an active professional
Twitter account, it can be a great source for research.
So if you’re a small business trying to
reach a millennial clientele, here’s what you might want to start doing: use brand ambassadors to establish trust within social networking communities,
tailor some of your products to younger adults who tend to be more conservative
with their finances, and if you’re looking to hire recent grads, try to find
university career fairs to attend and set up a professional Twitter to
advertise or give career advice. Keep it brief but meaningful, and you have a
very good chance for success!
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