What hashtag should you use to connect your tweets to an announcement? What’s the point of Snapchatting if it’s only temporary? Online social media conversations are ongoing cultural experiences that provide an opportunity to join in and interact with audiences. Tweeting and Snapchatting might not be mastered overnight, but they are engaging, relevant and personalized tools to help reach the elusive millennial audience in real time. Responsible for $200 billion in annual buying power, millennials represent a significant source of consumer influence in the marketplace and continue to shrug off traditional marketing tactics. Twitter and Snapchat can help you to engage millennials in an authentic way with your brand and products. Here are four reasons Twitter and Snapchat may be the right fit for you.
- Active and timely. These tools allow you to jump in and adapt to the moment as it happens. Whether during a special event or in the middle of breaking news, both platforms give your audience a transparent and fresh perspective from your point of view. You are able to engage and join in the experience with everyone else, keeping your brand relevant and plugged in – online and offline.
- Raw, accessible data. As you snap and tweet, you can see the traction your content is getting online in real-time. You’re able to track opens, retweets and favorites as they’re happening and interact with users who are engaging with your content.
- Mobilizing the user experience. Millennials spend an average of 4 hours every weekday using the Internet on their mobile devices. Twitter and Snapchat are quick-and-easy tools because they can be used out and about while experiencing an event. Millennials are making a majority of their decisions on mobile devices while on the go, including the 17+ million millennials on Twitter.
- Personalized content. Millennials tend to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and they value individuality. Twitter and Snapchat allow unique customization in the forms of geo-tagging and locating to allow millennials to check in with friends and peers. Twitter’s hashtags are used to bring people together around a topic or idea. They are also able to voice their own opinion or experiences. Snapchat’s geofilters can help brands integrate organically into the user experience. The key with both platforms is that neither is interrupting the user’s online interactions; they have been interwoven into the applications.
If you’re looking for professional assistance, public relations firms can be a smart resource for branding, creatively brainstorming and crafting online activity for engaging with specific audience groups. Millennials may have the largest and loudest presence in certain online platforms, but firms specializing in consumer PR can help you achieve your goals and elevate your presence on social media.
