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If you thought millennials were the ones obsessed with the internet, think again. There’s another generation that takes the phrase to a whole new level – Generation Z.
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Millennial age range is 21-34 years old and Gen Z is 16-20 years old. This is the generation that literally grew up with the Internet. It’s as if their whole life depended on it. So it’s safe to say that there’s no one else (read: no other generation) who knows their way around the World Wide Web.
While older generations have come to criticize the amount of time and energy (both physical and mental) that millennials spend on the internet, one also cannot ignore the fact that the internet, especially social media, that we know today now represents several billion dollars. -the dollar industry. In the United States alone, e-commerce activity exceeded a total of $504 billion in terms of net worth.
This only reveals the power that social media holds on the internet. It is, in all its complex simplicity, the driving force of the modern age of the Internet.
There is no smartphone without these social media apps. You won’t see anyone not spending at least an hour a day in their busy schedule scrolling through interesting news and feeds, liking pictures of what they want, what they have, what he wants to be and who he wants to be.
Facebook has over a billion reported users. If on average all of these users spend 40-50 minutes on the app each day and your media game is strong and your CTA post reaches out to these users at the right time, it could be jackpot time for you. So you see: there is a positive aspect to this,
Let’s dive a little deeper into the social media business outlook.
Build your brand
More … than 50% of millennials and Gen Z combined prefer to buy from a brand that has a strong online presence.
By a strong online presence, we mean:
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Active social media accounts – preferably YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can choose your social media platforms based on your target audience, demographics, business model, and more.
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Aggressive user engagement – interact with your online audience, observe their needs and respond to them. The more active you are in the comments section of your posts, the better brand you build around your product.
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Deliver value for time – if your audience gives you their time, they expect value in return. Top social media influencers say users sense selfishness in an account from afar. This means that if you’re in the game just for your benefit, your audience won’t be happy.
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Quality, not quantity – focus more on posting valuable content rather than just posting images with irrelevant captions. Understand your demographics and the issues your audience is facing, then address them.
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Slip away, don’t force – Develop a strategy for the content you release. Be subtle with your ads, but don’t be vague.
Follow the trends
It is important that you keep up to date with what’s new in the social media market. Whether it’s going minimalist with your design and copy or even incorporating memes into your brand advertising.
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Connect with your millennial audience by observing what resonates with them
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Conduct surveys to see what works for your brand and what doesn’t
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Review analytics to verify which campaigns should be continued and which should be modified
The younger generations are committed to creating and following new trends. They come up with jokes that relate to their situations, make movie references directed to the age they grew up in, etc.
Even social media has evolved with the needs of Gen Z in mind.
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Facebook has developed a platform to interact with people miles away
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Instagram literally took “a picture is worth a thousand words”
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Snapchat has upped the game by introducing limited life Video Stories
Evolution is what keeps the internet alive. We’ve come a long way since email marketing is THE THING of real-time interaction with consumers on Instagram and Twitter.
It’s the one thing that really speaks to the millennial mindset – evolution.
Have fun
After all, that’s how social media started – with a few exceptions being purely business platforms like LinkedIn – so people could interact with each other, share their experiences, and just have fun.
Connecting with millennials and Gen Z, as a brand, is also about showing them how much fun you are. The decade of the late 2010s shifted the advertising paradigm in the sense of all businesses to consumers looking for brands that actually care.
And if you’ve worked so hard to grow your business, we’re guessing you care about the problems your product solves and, by extension, your audience who faces those problems.
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The proven marketing pitch waits for you to first address the problem, the consumer facing it, and then tell them you have the solution.
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It also helps keep your social media profiles flexible. Include not only your brand-related posts, but also community concerns, public movements, and other similar topics. Even if these aren’t relevant to you as a brand, they do show that you care.
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Really, it’s about care. Millennials judge the value of a brand by the compassion it shows towards its community.
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As we move forward with a tech-focused generation, they also happen to be very sensitive to public and community issues.
There’s a lot of positivity floating around the internet if you know where to look for it.
Millennials and Generation Z have certainly found the hives online that they feel most comfortable in. It’s about business, entertainment, e-commerce, and even just leisure.
What you think of the Internet is how you want to see it. There are two sides to every coin. And while a lot of negativity is spread about the use of social media – which is also an unfortunate part of it – it’s just as unfair to distract attention from the best part of it.
Consider integrating social media into your business and daily life to see what really engages with younger generations.
