Social Marketing to Generation Z

As a social marketing professional, I learn from past successes, work to be effective with current tools, and anticipate engaging with newer audiences.

An infographic was released today on Generation Z by Marketo, exploring their aspirations, preferences, online behaviors and how companies can reach them.

GenZers were raised during the 2000s, amidst the most profound changes in at least a century, and will represent more than a quarter of the U.S. population.

So what are some Key(s) to Success in Reaching a GenZer?

• Connectivity of social media: They're learning from YouTube videos, engaging with classmates online, and grew up in a world in which one could be in conversation with anyone anywhere any time.
• Be fast moving and discreet: They have an average of 8 seconds for an attention span, 5 screens competing for their attention, and a preference for incognito media platforms. (I had never heard of Whisper or Secret...but perhaps that's the point?) The takeaway: Use visuals rather than text!
• Educate and build expertise: They're entrepreneurial at heart, mature, self-directed, and resourceful. High intensity working relationships allow for human connection, and they're less likely to resist authority under teaching-style leadership. Feeding their curiosity is a MUST.

One thing is for sure - Gen Z is part of a generation that is global, social, visual and technological. They're sophisticated and influential beyond their years. It'll be interesting to see social marketing professionals shift strategies to communicate and market to them. It makes me look forward to the future, almost as much as they do.

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Hootsuite takes control of your social business

So, it's been a while since I've posted...sorry about that! I took a hiatus once classes ended, enjoyed sleeping in and playing with my pup, Tobias. But now that fall is here (Happy belated Labor Day, btw!) I'm getting back into the swing of things.

I thought you should know that I'm not taking classes this semester either, but it won't stop me from posting diligently at least once a week. *Fingers crossed*

These last few weeks, I've been getting calls, emails, and presenting at work about different facets of social media and various platforms. And I'll admit, it's been a great experience applying my newly acquired knowledge IRL and providing my (albeit, limited) two-cents on content curation and engagement.

I recently just finished a webinar on Hootsuite, and thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about a few highlights that I've gathered on the online social media management tool.

Its original form dates back to 2008, when it was known as BrightKit, a dashboard for all things Twitter-related. It was renamed in 2009 and quickly expanded with new features, including the integration of other social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I found it especially important because of the following three features:

1. Listening - Only using Hootsuite to get the word out to followers? Sorry, but you're doing it wrong. You've got to listen, too! Listening to targeted conversations is often one of the underutilized methods of the management tool. You can listen to (almost) everything anyone is saying about you (or your company) by setting up streams for your platform. Take Twitter for example: you can follow Tweets Retweeted; Mentions; Keyword Search (domain name, a hashtag, alternate spelling); Sent Tweets; Your Retweets ; Direct Message (Inbox); Direct Message (Outbox); and Home Feed. This is especially great for engagement and user-generated content!
2. Insights - A social media strategy means nothing without analyzing your efforts. Luckily, Hootsuite allows users to measure ROI with real-time social analysis in brand sentiment, tracking a social profile's brand growth over time, and visualizing audience social demographics like gender and geography. You can pinpoint your reach down to the city-level. Whoa.
3. App Directory -  Hootsuite offers a collection of extensions and apps that users can add to their dashboard to create a customized experience. This goes way beyond the typical Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. You can add Instagram, EverNote, SlideShare, Reddit, DailyMotion... seriously, the list goes on and on. Users can manage, share, search, monitor, engage, optimize and explore streams of content that matter to them.

 

Hootsuite is great for its time saving capabilities. It allows users to manage social media sites from one place, no longer having to log in to four or more accounts separately. More than that, it's a crucial resource for a social strategy. Its scheduling and listening features are useful for content management and can help managers with creating additional timely/relevant posts. It's time to take control of your social business so social business can't take control of your time.

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Direction of Communication and Scope

Direction of Communication

In discussing the aspect of direction of communication, classic marketing is unidirectional. This means information and brand awareness is spread actively from the company to a passive audience. I would say classic marketing was appropriate when the messages highlighted the most commonly demanded goods to the largest common denominator of consumers via mass media like TV, radio, newspaper, and billboards. Marketers targeted specific demographics and reached a large audience in doing so. To rely solely on unidirectional marketing in this day and age, though, would be a marketing fail.

 

On the other hand, the new, social way of marketing can expect the best benefits of promotion and exchange of dialogue. Both the company and customers actively talk and listen to one another. There is a plethora of pros to social marketing, but here are two I deem most important:

1. It's where the brand's consumers are - the average person spends at least 23 minutes per day on Facebook, giving the brand optimized ad placement based on their preferences and psychographics.

2. Social media presents an opportunity for a degree of personalization, thus creating involvement and relevance, not just awareness (See Mass Marketing vs. Personalization infographic here on Social Media Today).

 

 

Campaigns have proven to be more effective when they include multimedia and multi-channels. With participatory channels, influence becomes more powerful than reach (Young, 2010). Classic marketing is better than social when traditional marketing channels are able to create especially memorable and emotional occasions with a brand and integrate tools of social media to create dialogue. This works well because it has the potential to lead to viral marketing. Direction of communication refers to social marketing channels like Facebook and Twitter where consumers spend most of their time and are prone to sharing "likes" of particular brands, organizations, and customer service experiences with their network of friends and fans. 

 

Scope

Classic marketing and social media marketing both want to gain market share for a product or service. The classic approach is smaller in scope, only because the bigger the audience you want to reach, the more it costs. Classic marketing allows for delivering to large audiences, measured by demographics that advertisers bought. This is noted with the product or service sale, but engagement ends there. In this way, I believe classic to be better than social.

 

Social is accessible by anyone regardless of their location. The downfall is you lose targeting. According to the reading from Mitch Joel's The World is Changing has Changed, the average post from a Facebook brand page only reaches 16% of its fans. So trying to reach a certain demographic may prove to be difficult.

 

A social media marketing campaign can be just as successful as its classic counterpart if it has knowledge of demographics from their users. Without it, there's only opportunity for the brand to target by content behavior and response (Young, 2010). Social marketing allows for more interaction with the brand since the consumer is digitally-enabled and connected. The consumers' appetite for information and entertainment grows exponentially, as the focus now shifts from markets and products to the brand's customers, their relationships and interaction over time. Although sharing an opinion of the product or service becomes as easy as a like or re-tweet button, the social model demands much more than what's normally included in marketing.

 

A brand's marketing campaign will retain its competitive edge by raising awareness via classic marketing and then engaging their audience through their social media platforms.

 

Source:

Bennett, S. (2013, December 1). Facebook Vs Twitter: Revenue, Users, Average Time Spent, Key Mobile Data [STATS]. - AllTwitter.
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/facebook-vs-twitter-data-stats_b51335

Jones, M. (2013, May 13). Mass Marketing vs One-to-One Personalization [INFOGRAPHIC]. RSS.
http://socialmediatoday.com/martinjones/1452891/mass-marketing-vs-one-one-personalization-infographic

Stone, J. J. (2014, February 26). Social Media vs. Classic Marketing - We teach you how to start your own business in 60 days. We teach you how to start your own business in 60 days.
http://60daymba.com/social-media-vs-classic-marketing/

Young, A. (2010). Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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