5 Kinds of Content Millennials Love
Many of you might be in different camps on this, some may be absolutely sick of hearing about Millennials and some may be hungry to understand how Millennials think. The truth is that love it or hate it Millennials are the biggest generation in the entirety of American history. Born between 1978 and 2000, Millennials number around 95 million– 17 million more than the largest previous generation, the Baby Boomers with 78 million. In short, if you respect the power of content marketing, reaching Millennials should be a top priority.
Millennials love video and accessibility on all of their devices.
According to a study by Tumblr and Razorfish ‘Millennials expect content that is available across all of their devices. Create a seamless experience on mobile devices and make video streaming smooth and effortless , and watch your content marketing efforts bring in the visitors.
Millennials need content that satisfies their need for realness and transparency.
Gone are the days of broadcasting the way you want your brand to be perceived until a good chunk of people get on board. With the proliferation of reviews for everything, brands might as well get real with their Millennial customers and write content that gets down and dirty with the facts. If you work for corporate overlords, you might not have the luxury to talk about your product’s flaws, but all the more advantage for the smaller and nimbler teams who can speak to issues and improve on them in the light of day.
Millennials appreciate content they can contribute to, participate in, customize, and make their own.
No one’s unaware of the success of quizzes on Buzzfeed, but even the culture of commenting on other people’s work and blogs, underlies a current of expectation that Millennials don’t like to feel muted. Some would consider the level of participation many of them require as egocentric, but if you don’t allow the participation on your site or platform – they’ll take it somewhere else where you have even less control. Brands will do well to encourage as much participation on their websites as they can facilitate efficiently.
Millennials share and revel in content that is emotional or attached to a cause they believe in or taps into social proof.
How many times do you see the shares go sky-high on even commercials on Facebook that are emotional and spark a certain sense of novelty in people’s minds while satisfying a deeply held belief that they have.
Beyond deeply held beliefs, reviews and social media integration into campaigns allows them to get on board more quickly. If you have some hard-earned social proof to feature, slam visual evidence of that everywhere – like Squatty Potty’s emphasis on its 5-star Amazon reviews.
Millennials love content that is brief, funny and entertaining.
You don’t have to be a sociologist to see the Millennial obsession with all things hilarious. Memes, gifs, emoji’s and comedy everything – maybe it’s the perceived chaotic nature of how rapidly technology is evolving the social landscape: humor is how we cope, and how we resolve certain things that are uncomfortable.
You don’t have to sell every time you create content and actually should actively avoid it, so be very strategic about how you’re working in your branding and your calls-to-action within the content. Though, if you’re creating a true commercial like the squatty potty example above, don’t shy away from selling but make sure you’re entertaining or truly informing while you sell. Content that truly entertains, inspires or informs on something where demand for information is high will always be watchable even if it’s a commercial in its classic form.
Tim Brown – Designer/Marketer at Snap Agency – Minneapolis Web Design
