How Would I Market to Myself: Marketing to Gen Y Consumers

Recently, I’ve found myself wondering if social media marketers (myself included) are missing a massive opportunity when it comes to marketing to Millennial consumers. With the availability of numerous digital tools and our social media culture, it’s become much easier to interact with the 18-24 year-old demographic. Easier, however, does not mean more effective.

This morning Marc Meyer put out this Tweet:

Since I had just read two articles from the Wall Street Journal and MediaPost stating that only 22% of Millenials use Twitter, and of those, only 29% follow companies, I agreed with him.

Then, Marc asked me a thought-provoking question: How would you market to you?

Good question – one that forced me to separate myself from my day job as a marketing professional so I could think like the 23-year-old kid I am.

Below, I’ve listed several ways I’d like to see companies marketing to me.

1. Rely on Word-of-Mouth. With social networking sites, what you say and do can spread rapidly among my peers. If 10 of my friends become a fan of your page on Facebook, it shows up on my homepage and I’m intrigued, and more likely to click through to your page. Facebook makes this easy with its advertising, but if you can find ways to do this on Twitter and other sites, you’ll certainly be helping out your brand.

2. Add value by being relevant. However, don’t expect everything you say to cause a cascade effect on social media platforms. Focus on adding value rather than overloading on content. People my age are really, really good at tuning out what we don’t want to hear. (Just ask our parents.) The best way to ensure we’re listening to your messages is to make them relevant to us. Learn why we’re in a given community, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or an iPhone app, and speak to us without severely interrupting what we’re doing.

3. Be conversational. When you’re trying to build awareness about your brand to gain customers, don’t use social media as a billboard but as a telephone. Social media should be an interactive tool, and when your consumers speak, listen and respond. In my experience, the most successful Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages are those that go beyond simple @replies and wall posts. Ask questions, get our feedback, and implement changes. Everyone likes to have their ego stroked, right? Brand consumers, especially Gen Y ones, are no different. What feels better than having a company listen to reasonable, quality recommendations we’ve made?

4. Offer free stuff. We’re just out of college.  Loan payments are becoming a harsh reality.  If you want us to try out your brand, give us some free samples or coupon codes.  Reward us for being loyal customers by launching programs like all those restaurants do. Imagine if your favorite sunscreen or deodorant had Buy 10, The Eleventh Is On Us cards? I know I’d be much more inclined to consistently buy my favorite brand rather than whatever is on sale, which is what I do now.  Plus, if a company could build an entire online community based on the loyalty rewards system, I’d probably check it out to see what other users are saying about new products/sales/coupons/etc.

5. Give back. Millennials are do-gooders, and we pride ourselves on supporting companies that are good, too. If you can leverage a social responsibility campaign into your marketing plan, make sure the right Gen Y demographics are aware of it. Kind actions certainly make advertising words stick better in my mind.

What else can be added to this list? What companies do you think are already doing a great job marketing to Gen Y through social media? What other ideas are there beyond social networking sites?

Why Online Marketers Might Be Wrong About Collegiate Consumers: Twitter is for Fun, Not Business!

I recently received this press release from the PRSSA chapter at my alma mater, and found the results interesting enough that I wanted to share with you.  Basically, a research team found out that social media marketing might not be as hard-hitting in the college crowd as we thought.  Granted, the sample size is a bit on the small side, but I do think the concept behind the research is worth noting: many college students only use these sites to interact with their friends, not with companies and brands.  It’s hard for me to imagine this since it’s what I spend the majority of my day doing, but I’m really interested to see what you all have to say after reading the press release:

A recent survey conducted by a research team from the Walter E. Griscti chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America at the University of South Florida reveals that this generation does not understand the business applications of new social media sites like Twitter.

Of the 250 Florida college students surveyed, 99 percent use social networking sites. However, only 15 percent have an account with Twitter and 34 percent have never even heard of the site.Some 58 percent of the students who have Twitter accounts never use the service or rarely log-on.

“There is a stereotype that because students are always plugged in that they understand the strategic uses of social media sites,” said Kelli Burns, professor at the University of South Florida and author of the forthcoming Celeb 2.0: How Social Media Foster our Fascination with Popular Culture. “Businesses have a misconception that students know how to use Twitter; these findings prove otherwise.”

The research team survey results reveal two distinct findings. First, college students are not active Twitter users. More importantly, they are not interested in interacting with brands through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

A common misconception is that sites like Twitter offer an innovative way for advertisers and companies to interact with the young demographic. However, 75 percent of students say they would be “not at all interested in” or “don’t care about” following brands, companies, or organizations on Twitter.

Many companies assume that social media enables college students to be smarter consumers. Sites like Twitter, social media analysts claim, act as a medium for the new two-way communication between brands and consumers. Given the media chatter about the importance of social networking for corporations, there is a disconnect between the promise of social media and reality.

Results reveal that a mere 6 percent of college students follow companies and only 4 percent follow brands on social media sites. These findings suggest that if corporations and communicators continue to bet on college students using social media sites effectively, they may come up empty handed.

The fact is that college students use social media sites primarily for keeping in touch with friends, not for networking or brand interaction. Until Millennials become less weary of this interaction, the gap between what business professionals expect and what college students actually know will continue to widen.

Do you think this report is accurate? Do brands communicating online miss the mark when attempting to engage with collegiate consumers?

Confessions of a Spendaholic: Why Creating (and sticking to) Budgets is Easier Than Ever Before

America’s economic situation is dismal. The headlines are depressing, the outlook isn’t good, and Americans are struggling in a sea of unemployment. Despite this, I somehow managed to let my spending spiral out of control. I have finally acknowledged my problem – I was a spendaholic – and thanks to a slew of easy-to-use online tools I have found ways to regain control of my habits.

Now, a slight disclaimer: I didn’t go crazy and accumulate tons of debt on credit cards. I am still relatively debt-free, but when I analyzed my spending habits, I realized that I wasn’t saving as much each month as I could have been. Money that should be going toward my professional and personal development was being spent on… well, that was the problem: I had no idea where my money was going.

It all started when I got my first full-time job. Receiving regular pay checks after being a broke college student for so long made it a little less painful to check my bank account. In fact, those checks made it so much easier that I stopped checking my accounts altogether. I became a spendaholic because I knew the money would be there.

In January, I checked my account and realized that after 4 months of having a job, my financial standing had not changed as much as I’d hoped it would. My savings had little growth and my checking had stayed the same every month.

Then, it hit me: I was living in the moment, and not thinking about my future. I realized that if I continued spending money at the rate I was, I would never save enough to go back to school or buy a car or purchase a home or travel as much as I wanted. Something had to change.

I decided I would sign up for a financial service that tracked and analyzed my spending habits. Many of my friends and co-workers recommended mint.com, and that’s the service I went with. (I’ve also heard great things about expensr.com.)

I’ve been using mint.com for a week, and I’m hooked. I can go back several months and see where the majority of my money went. It was a brutally honest wake up call – one I desperately needed. Like most young professionals trying to get settled in a new city, most of my money went toward my social life: concerts, movies, eating out, and happy hours.

Using mint.com, I adjusted my budget so I was cutting back on these things. Even with slight changes in each area, I will be saving thousands of dollars this year that can be put toward future investments. Mint.com also sends me alerts when I am getting close to a certain budget, or if large transactions occur in my accounts which helps me easily track my monthly spending.

In this era of economic uncertainty, I decided to reel in my inner spendaholic so I can practice financial responsibility skills that I hope will serve me well as I get further away from the collegiate lifestyle.

New Gen Y Community: 2Sense Online

A couple of weeks ago, Michael Eisenstadt contacted me to see if I would let him interview me for his new Web site, 2Sense Online. After browsing the site, I agreed. The up-and-coming site caters to Gen Y through articles that analyze and discuss a variety of topics, from politics to economics to career advancement.

It’s community of experts and contributers who write about issues affecting young professionals. The articles that I have read are informative and engaging, so I’ll be very excited to see how this site grows in the next few months.

As I learned from being a part of Brazen Careerist, Gen Y communities foster dynamic conversations that have opened my eyes to new perspectives and taught me that my peers are incredibly intelligent.

Even if you aren’t a Gen Y-er, I encourage you to check out both these sites. Oh, and you can find my interview here.

Life Post Graduation Part 2: Finding a Job in an Economic Crisis

I recently wrote about my internship and how positive that experience was in my transition from college life to corporate America. Now, I have completed my first week as a salaried employee in the real world. What’s even better? I’m pretty sure I’ve landed my dream job at New Media Strategies.

So how did I do it? Easy – I built up a personal and a digital network, discovered what I was passionate about, and did a lot of research to find a position that would challenge me and fit my criteria for workplace values.

Okay, so it wasn’t that easy. With our economy in its current state, it’s a difficult process to find a great entry-level job. No matter how many times I rewrote my cover letter and reviewed my résumé, getting interviews at companies was practically impossible without help from my friends and network.

For example, I read about New Media Strategies when I first got to D.C. Since I’m slightly obsessed with this new digital era I wanted to connect with others who shared this passion. I checked out the company’s site NOT to look for a job, but to find people. I discovered the blogs of Leslie Bradshaw and Andre Blackman, so I started following them and a few other NMSers on twitter. I reached out to Leslie telling her how I’d just moved here and was always looking for social media events to go to, and we ended up meeting in person at an event a couple of days later.

As my internship reached an end, I noticed that NMS was hiring. I sent a DM to Leslie saying that she had inspired me with some of her recent work and that I was thinking about applying. She quickly responded and told me to e-mail the head of HR, which I did, and here I am!

Yesterday, I was talking to a close friend of mine who is finishing up her CPA and trying to land a job at a big time accounting firm. She’s very smart, organized, experienced, and has a near perfect GPA. And, it doesn’t hurt that both of her parents are respected accountants. Then, she told me she wanted to get a job without using her parents’ networks. While I understand her desire to get a job on her own without any help, I told her that this was no time to be humble and that she should make use of the people she knows, especially with our the entry-level job market as fragile as it is right now.

What do you think? Did I give her the right advice? How did you get your first job after college?

By the way, be sure to check out my new blogroll with a list of my very talented co-workers’ blogs.

Life Post Graduation Part 1: Summer Internships

This time last year I was dreaming about life post-college and wondering what I’d be doing those first few months when I was no longer a student – for the first time in 12 years.

I thought about backpacking around Europe with friends, moving home and taking a mental health vacation before jumping into the real world, landing my dream job at a top-tier PR agency, or maybe even gearing up for a fall semester at grad school somewhere. There were lots of potential plans.

I never thought I’d be interning. By the time I graduated, I figured I’d have had enough internships to be ready to take on an entry-level position. Plus, I looked down on being an intern with a college degree. I thought it would be like wearing a neon sign around my neck: Meg Roberts – intern with a B.A., inadequately prepared for life in the real world.

I was very wrong.

My first summer as someone with a Bachelor’s degree just ended, and I spent my time interning with an excellent company in Washington, D.C – VOX Global Mandate. Now that my internship is nearing an end, I’m glad I got over being an intern snob. Interning after graduation was the perfect transition to full-fledged employee, and it was also incredibly rewarding.

Making the jump from my college town (and home state) to a different location was something I wanted to do, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. Interning in a new city before landing a full-time position gave me a 3-6 month cushion to see if I even liked D.C. It allowed me to monitor my cost of living (which helped in that infamous salary negotiation conversation), and if I could handle the separation from family and friends. If I had hated D.C., it would have been okay for me to head home without feeling like I was quitting a job after only three months.

After graduation, I knew I wanted to leave Florida and try something new. Interning was a great first step in marketing my personal brand in a new town. While social media can help build a long-distance network, nothing beats genuine, face-to-face interaction. As an intern, my company allowed me to participate in numerous events where I was able to meet congressional members, other PR practitioners, journalists, and fellow social media fanatics. I’m not saying that this can’t happen in an entry-level position, but this helped me extend my job search once I was in D.C.

Holding a full-time internship is very different than popping into an office 2-4 days a week for a couple hours at a time. Because I was working every day for 8 hours (or sometimes 10), I got to see a lot of the behind-the-scenes grunt work that goes into public relations (or any industry!). I learned more about company culture and morale – two things any potential employee should consider before accepting a job offer. Since I was there all day, I got pulled into more meetings, worked on more projects, and got to know my colleagues better.

All of these things helped me realize that I chose the right career. But imagine if I found out I hated public relations – I’m the type of person that would feel very guilty about jumping ship, and would probably stay in the industry far longer than I wanted.

Coming into an internship with past experience helped, too. My executive team at VOX let me work on a variety of client projects once they saw that I was capable of pulling from my past internships and integrating them with the my new team’s knowledge. Now that I’ve been interning for a couple of months, I know that my previous work helped me get even more out of this current position.

This summer taught me that being an intern after graduation does not, in any way, reflect poorly on preparedness. So while interning wasn’t on my list of things-to-do-after-college, I’m very happy that it ended up being my plan and I hope others will see the benefits of graduate internships.

Dear College: Breaking Up is Hard to Do.

Dear College,

I knew it would be difficult to write this, but I didn’t really understand how hard it would be until now. Even though I entered this relationship knowing it would never last, the abrupt ending has caught me off guard. When I made this commitment in 2004, four years seemed so long— receiving a diploma as I walked across a stage was a distant dream, so was the fact that I would actually have to repay $7,000 in student loans one day.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it isn’t you, it’s me. I’ve been living in this fantasy world for long enough, and now it’s time to move on.

Don’t get me wrong—I will always look back with fondness on the times we shared: the 3:30 a.m. roadtrips with my roommate to get milkshakes, the days I stayed in bed until 1 p.m. because I had nothing better to do, the BBQs at the pool on a Tuesday afternoon, the midnight volleyball games, the tailgates before football games. Remember that one time a group study session turned into a mid-day happy hour at Chili’s that lasted until 2 in the morning? Those are great memories that will keep me going when I’m working 60 hours a week to afford my rent payment. And my health insurance. And my phone bill. And groceries. And…

They say that no relationship is bad because you come out of it with more experience, more wisdom. Well, I learned more from you than I hoped, whether it was from a professor in the classroom or life lessons that come with getting older and growing more independent. There was that time when I was a freshman who had no concept of budgeting money, and I accumulated $250 in overdraft fees. Or that time in Spain when locals tried discussing simple current events with me that I knew nothing about, so I started following international news more closely. Then there were the transfer students leaving behind homes destroyed in Hurricane Katrina who taught me to never take anything for granted, and the single mom working two jobs to pay her way through college that made me appreciate my own mother’s struggles.

All these memories make me wonder if I’m doing the right thing by ending this, but somehow, deep down, I know that I’m ready to take the next step. Even though it’s difficult, it feels right to trade in the keys to my dorm room for an apartment far away from any loud fraternity houses. I’ll exchange beer pong tournaments for dinner and drinks with co-workers. I’m ready to leave behind the 15-page term papers so that I can work on project briefings and campaign proposals.

It might sound a little crazy, but I’m excited for the challenges that the real world will bring. My relationship with you has prepared me well for the journey, and for that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Until we meet again (I’ll be back for Homecoming next year…),

Meg

4 Reasons Why College Students Aren’t Blogging—Even Though They Should Be

Last week, Ryan Paugh of Employee Evolution gave me the idea to write a post about why more college students aren’t blogging. Immediately, I accepted the challenge and started pounding out a post. Seven-hundred words later, I realized my post had turned into a rant. While it felt great to vent about my lack of peers in the blogosphere, I wasn’t sure the post would actually benefit anyone, so I saved it in my files but never posted in on my blog.

Now that some time has passed, I find myself still thinking about the issue, but with a little less… fiery anger, if you will.

So why aren’t more college students blogging? I can only think of two people my age who actively blog, and one of them I made do it because he is the Student Body President and I’m the Director of Marketing and Public Affairs, which means I can force him to try new marketing programs whenever I want.

The buzz in the industry is that blogging catches attention, enhances your writing skills, builds an online social network, and, ahem,
affects the hiring process.

But that doesn’t seem to be enough incentive, so what keeps students from blogging? I’ve made some assumptions, but please, feel free to add to it!

1. Lack of time – College students have hectic schedules, and after long days of classes, studying, and interning, the last thing they want to do is spend time blogging. This is my advice: posts don’t have to be long! Some of the best are less than 250 words, in fact, readers’ attention spans are short, so no need to write lengthy essays! Also, you can blog as much or as little as you want—it’s about quality, not quantity.
2. Lack of ideas – Many of my peers say they don’t know what to write about. I suggest finding someone’s blogroll and following it for a while. Interact with the bloggers—leave comments and participate in the various dialogues. This will not only give you ideas, it will also get you active in the community. This can help in the “lack of time” category, too (two birds with one stone, anyone?). Kudos to my classmate Tory for being a pro at this. Even though she doesn’t blog right now, she is involved in the blogosphere, which keeps her up-to-date on industry trends and earns her some much-deserved recognition.
3. Lack of Knowledge About Blogging – This one kills me. College students could potentially have some of the most fascinating blogs as they are constantly presented with new ideas in their classes, activities, and social lives, but they don’t blog about it because they “aren’t really sure how.” WordPress and Blogger are fool proof, so log in and start writing!
4. Apathy – The last reason is that many students just don’t care. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done about this, but I hope as more students are rewarded with jobs, internships, and scholarships they will find some value in this medium.

It’s upsetting that more of my friends and classmates don’t blog, and not just because I’d like a larger readership (ha), but because I know the importance of social media. As Chris Clarke said, blogging no longer makes you exceptional—it’s expected.

Well, that’s my take, but I’m interested in what you all think.