2014: The year of the millennial

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This year you will see brands put more focus than ever into marketing to Millennials, as they become more influential in the workspace and in the economy. As a marketing manager or a marketing specialist you will have to develop and incorporate plans to reach the millennial audience while still staying appealing to your current audience. Where do you even start?

Here are 5 high level suggestions on where we think you should start.

1. Google + is “an absolute must for brands these days.” Posts and engagement on Google + play into Google’s search algorithms much more heavily than other social networks do, so if you want to maximize your search engine optimization, focus your attention here.
2. Story, Story, Story. It all starts with the brand story. Social media provides a vehicle to share your corporate culture and history with a nearly limitless audience. So while some thoughtful planning and writing can tell a great story, many brands aren’t doing this, because it is time consuming.
3. Social Listening, yes we can hear you. Social listening has never been more important until now, there is a HUGE difference in knowing you “In-store audience” and your “Social Audience” you need to know both for the success of your brand. Brands like SocialREST have great tools to get into this space.
4. Channel the Buzzfeed method, the popular hybrid website of news and entertainment, in your online content. In other words, content should be highly social, mobile friendly and transcend generations.

Highly social means it should elicit shares, likes and comments. For example, positive posts inspire users to retweet the happy stories, which means more organic visibility for your brand.

Mobile friendly means it should be formatted for reading on the go, because more people than ever read content on their phones, not on desktop computers.

Transcending generations means that content is appealing to millennials, baby boomers, and everyone in between. It needs to be so shareable that your 16 year old sister and your 80 year old grandfather will relate to it and share it.

5. Always, always, always be positive in your brand message. As soon as you are able to create a message that INSPIRES others, you can sit back and watch the magic happen. It will be sharable on its own.

Have questions or want to talk about it? Let us know!