As the marketing minds behind any business know, the lifeblood of engaging with your target audience often comes via the avenues of social media.
Social media can be a godsend in the world of PR, offering a world of insightful analytics to track, as well as likes, comments, retweets, shares and other forms of audience engagement to monitor. Reaching a large following has never been so swift and convenient, with so much data available to learn more about your audience and its behavior.
Of course, social media is a double-edged sword and can be a scourge of user negativity, community backlash and, in some cases, damaging effects to one’s brand or reputation. Just as perilous to one’s business is ineffective social media strategizing that is pedestrian and uninspired, and thus unable to reach the audience it targets or falls on blind eyes and deaf ears. It’s critical to know your messaging, the ways it is communicated and the audience at which it is directed.
PR professionals are hard-pressed to find a handier tool to generate buzz around a trending topic and amplify key messaging. But which social media platforms are most effective in conveying messages to your targeted audience? It all depends on the cohort in which they fall, as different age groups rely on social media for different reasons and purposes.
Most recently, social media researchers have noticed this with regard to the budding Generation Z, the demographic of individuals born between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. As the rising Generation Z enters the workplace, it offers significant spending power and is set to account for one-third of the global population, according to Bloomberg. Generation Z is also revealing its own unique social media habits.
Generation Z primarily turns to social media for entertainment purposes, according to market research company Global Web Index. Gen-Zers are typically drawn to highly visual formats, such as Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram. They’re shifting away from Facebook and gravitating toward newer platforms such as TikTok, a social media app that boasts over 100 million followers and allows users to create and post short 15-second video clips. They crave face-to-face interaction.
And Generation Z spends a significant amount of time on social media. Gen-Zers are perpetually connected through mobile devices, spending more time on them than any previous generation. Internet advertising company Criteo reports that 95 percent of teenagers have access to a smartphone, with the average teen spending 11 hours per week on it. Gen-Zers spend an average of 23 hours per week streaming videos, or an average of three hours and 15 minutes per day. This can largely be attributed to the fact that Generation Z, unlike any generation before it, hasn’t known a world without social media technology, and is therefore referred to as tech-native or tech-innate.
But Generation Z’s social media fixation isn’t limited to merely seeking entertainment. Not unlike their Millennial counterparts, Gen-Zers want to make a difference in the world and see social media as their avenue to do so. A study from Cone Communications found that 81 percent of Gen-Zers believe they can “have an impact on social and environmental issues by using social media.” Eighty-two percent of respondents said they use social media “to talk about issues they care about,” while 58 percent said they believed “supporting social or environmental issues online is more effective at making a difference than doing something out in their communities.”
Knowing these types of audience tendencies and behaviors is critical to the health of any business, especially when dealing with a future demographic that accounts for such a significant share of the global market. Familiarizing with your audience is essential to effectively communicating with them, and in turn, successfully operating and growing your business. Employing the appropriate communication strategies to reach your audience ensures your organization will achieve its business goals faster, keep customers in the pipeline and, as a result, boost its bottom line.