Hello, my name is Graham, and I’m a Millennial. I’m very unique, and your company is struggling to reach my peers. We’ve never known life without an overabundance of technology, and it shows. We are extremely good at multitasking and are too busy texting one another, tweeting about that new celebrity, watching that awesome cat video on Youtube, posting our new favorite band on our Facebook, and browsing Pinterest for the latest styles to hear what you have to say.
So how do you get our attention?
Show us that you WANT to engage with us
Make the move to social media. Since we are already there, it’s a good place to engage with us. Traditional advertising doesn’t work as effectively with my generation because we don’t engage with it. Showing a willingness to talk with us makes us more trusting of your brand.
Keep in mind that we are very needy…
We have the attention spans of two year olds (on a good day) — so content needs to be concise, relevant and engaging. Promises, sales gimmicks, and jingles will no longer get the sale.
Heed our distrust of corporate America
There is a distrust of big corporations among my generation. Companies can overcome this by supporting a cause that is a concern to us. Cause-based initiatives give companies a human quality, which we appreciate.
Make us laugh
We love that funny clip, and we love sharing it with all our friends. Making a funny video or other content can be a great way to get our attention. It is important to note, however, that there is a very fine line between funny and irrelevant (I told you, we are needy!). read the full story...
It hasn’t even been a month since I started interning here at EIM, yet I feel like I’ve already learned so much. Prior to arriving at EIM, most of my experience with digital media involved managing social media accounts for various local events and businesses and maintaining my own personal blog. As a recent college graduate who studied media and communications for four years, I felt very much aware of the power of social media and how sites like Twitter and Facebook have been reshaping our lives and the way we do business.
But while social media channels can certainly play a great role in things like brand management and customer engagement, it is really just a piece of the marketing puzzle. It’s not enough to just make a Facebook and Twitter page for your business and wait for fans and followers to roll in. It is very important to make sure your social media efforts line up with your overall marketing strategy. It’s also useful to find ways to integrate your social media pages into other channels such as your website, newsletters, mobile apps, print ads, and even TV commercials (see: American Express)
As social media strategist Jay Baer puts it, “Social media is not a solo act. It’s best as part of a jazz combo.” And one very important player in that combo that I knew very little about before coming here was “search marketing.” While working closely with the Web Marketing Team here at EIM, I’m really starting to recognize the importance of search marketing. SEO, SEM, paid search, and search engines in general all play huge parts in gaining traffic to your company website and reaching your marketing goals, whether that means increasing product sales or raising brand awareness. read the full story...
