How to create content for millennials?

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Millennials – the generation that wants it all and wants it now! They are in their prime, have the spending power, choose job satisfaction over job security, choose passion over practicality, love their pets and pet videos and choose innovation over convention. Now when such are their quirks, how do you create content that speaks to them?

Here’s a five-step guide that can help you create content that appeals to millennials!

1. What’s your story?

Impressing a millennial is a no easy task. They are less trusting than earlier generations and rightly so! They are continuously bombarded with information and with reviews and opinions at their disposal. And that’s precisely when authenticity comes into the picture. Make a millennial believe that you are authentic, and half your job is done. To sway their decisions and get them to interact with your brand, you have to stand out truly. And how do you do it? Tell them your story.

Storytelling is an excellent tool to generate brand loyalty. Share your history, your brand values, your goals and your mission. Market your genuine self and if they connect, you have a fan for life.

To tell your brand story, first, choose your brand voice. Are you conversational and casual or formal and authoritative? It will decide how your users relate to you. Then look at your core brand values, your vision and mission – ensure your brand story and communication aligns with them. Invest in campaigns that effectively communicate your brand values.

But remember, appealing to millennials is not just about saying the right things, it’s about actually demonstrating them. The rule of thumb is to market your purpose.

2. Make millennials work

Finding it difficult to gauge what millennials like? Make them work for it. Millennials love telling their stories. No wonder then user-generated content (UGC) is highly popular, with millennials contributing to 70% of it and spending 30% of their time online consuming UGC . Encourage millennials to share stories and they’ll happily share a month’s worth content with you. Make UGC an integral part of your editorial calendar and you will drive more engagement too. It is the easiest and most inexpensive way to generate organic and authentic content.

Strike their emotional chord with effective campaigns and hashtags, run contests where users share their experiences with you, ask them to write reviews and testimonials. Collect this content and showcase it on your website and social media.

UGC is also popular among marketers, given that it becomes an excellent tool to build brand authenticity and credibility. The more the number of users sharing content worth you, more the chances of gaining new users and more sales.

3. Interact with them

From 12 seconds in the year 2000 to around 8 seconds today, our attention span has shrunk and how! So how do you engage with a generation that is known for its short attention span? Create interactive content. Engage your audience in quizzes, polls, dynamic infographics, games and contests!

Why does interactive content appeal to millennials? It’s new, it’s exciting and it creates a personalised experience. But it also benefits your brand. Interactive content pushes your user to pay more attention which gives you a chance to drive your message home quickly. It leads to increased message retention and better brand recall.

4. Is your content mobile friendly?

How often do you use a desktop to browse? Our browsing habits have changed drastically in the past couple of years and the number of users browsing the internet through mobile phones has increased exponentially. On average, a person spends close to five hours on their mobile phone daily and over 52% of total web traffic comes from mobile phones. Moreover, millennials are known to check their mobile phones at least 150 times a day. Now, what choice do you have but to create content that is mobile friendly?

Remember that reading on a mobile phone is different than reading on the desktop. On mobile, you don’t browse from left to right and your focus is more distributed. And that gives you an added advantage. You can use the entire space and optimise all the content on the screen.

Stick to crisp and short headlines that drive the point home quickly. Break your content into snackable and easy to read units. Add images and videos to make content more visually appealing and easy to consume. And don’t forget to keep it brief. After all, brevity didn’t hurt anyone.

5. What’s the data telling you?

Data-driven insights are integral to any business decision. When your product and sales strategy are based on previous successes, why shouldn’t you create content that your users are consuming? Study your analytics carefully. What is the kind of content that is being consumed and how is the pattern evolving? Data will tell you what the millennials are consuming.

Analyse the website traffic, time spent, bounce rate and social media engagement of any content piece that you create. These metrics will reveal how well it was received. Now do a comparative analysis of all the content you’ve created in a week or a month and you’ll know which article or a webpage has worked better.

Remember that content consumption patterns are evolving faster than before. What was relevant a two months ago or when you started your business might not be relevant today. And that’s why you need to continuously monitor and analyse what is working and what is not. Use these insights to create content or an editorial calendar for the upcoming week or month. It’s worth the effort because relevant content will help you drive engagement and build the right brand image.

To sum it up, millennials are humans and humans have emotions. Appeal to their emotions and quirks and you have a loyal customer and a brand ambassador. Want us to help you create content that appeals to millennials? Give us a call!