The Dancing Generation — 3 Content Marketing Strategies To Win The Trust of Gen Z and Millenials

Prior to this time, about two hundred years ago, before the industrial revolution, people made what they needed on their farms by hand. That changed when people build companies that invented machines to make products much faster and easier than they could by hand. People working at these companies made money and bought items like food and clothing instead of making them by hand. Since companies began manufacturing their products in large quantities, they have needed to convince consumers to buy them. Before the great war, most companies were happy to purchase a manufactured product because it was cheaper and more convenient. However, as more companies began offering more and more goods, businesses needed to stand out from the crowd to make sales. The abundance of new and cheap goods during the era meant that there were many different and affordable products to buy. The emergence of these companies in their large numbers also plays a huge role in the spread of consumerism. The marketing viewpoint during this period held that if a product was made, then people would come to buy it. Even though the products were not customized and did not meet every person’s needs exactly, consumers were eager to purchase the manufactured goods because they were affordable and convenient.

The growth of technology and machinery in the after years made significant changes in almost every aspect of late 20th and early 21st-century life, from transport efficiency and safety to access to food and healthcare, socialization and productivity. The power of the internet technology enabled global communities to form, and ideas and resources to be shared more easily. However, nothing comes with 100% benefits, and similar is the case for technology adoption. Technology has profoundly altered our modes of life. Pings, alerts, rings, and notifications have shifted our focus in a way that has led to long-lasting difficulties with paying attention. For example, switching our attention between social media, smartphones, and tablets as well as TV, radio, or other media harms our ability to pay attention to one particular content or activity for a long period — something that is correctly recognised by 67% of the public.

Marketing as a field was not left out of the technological revolution. Marketing evolved since the heavy adoption of technological tools and continues to evolve in the twenty-first century. With the increased competition, companies could not rely on their products alone to drive sales. Many companies have determined that to be successful, they must become less internally focused and more externally focused on the customers. Improved communication (especially the Internet), increased globalization, and rapid changes in technology have put tremendous pressure on companies to use campaigns and social media platforms to reach out to their customers and expand their audience base. On social media, for example, you have to grab the audience’s attention to acquire a measurable return on investment. Your audience needs to see your activity among a large crowd of social content. On Twitter, you only have a few minutes for your tweet to be seen unless optimized or paid for in advertising. Facebook and Instagram run a little slower, but you can still see your content getting lost in the mass swarm of activity.

A few years ago, people feel comfortable listening to a single track from their favourite artist for five minutes, but that was when they had enough time and there are few technological devices or innovations contesting for their attention. Access to information during this era was limited and people had enough time to spend on any piece of information at any given time. But that was then! “Mr Money With The Vibes”, a 12-tracked album by Asake, a Nigerian afrobeat singer and songwriter which lasted for just 30 minutes is a true testament to the fact that the attention span of people (majorly millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha) have dropped. According to the treetop, the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. Attention spans range from 2 seconds to 20 minutes. The average human attention span decreased by almost 25% from 2000 to 2015. The drop in attention span from 12 seconds to 8 seconds is attributed to a decline as a side effect of the basic attempt to adapt to the mobile era. Majority of individuals aged 18 to 24 searched for their phones straight away if they weren’t engaging in another task. One of the fields that have sprung up as a result of this is the attention economy.

The attention economy rests on the idea that attention is a scarce resource to compete for. In this digital economy, trade is increasingly built around information rather than physical commodities. However, information isn’t scarce; rather, the limiting factor is human attention. This economy has birthed a lot of social media apps that focus on engaging users within the 8 to 12 seconds they are willing to offer for any piece of information. One of the apps at the forefront of this revolution is TikTok. YouTube, Instagram and many other social media apps have also rolled out features that can help them stay relevant in the attention economy. To put this into perspective, six thousand tweets are posted on Twitter every second as of 2022. If we do the math, it is equivalent to three hundred and fifty tweets per minute, five hundred million tweets each day, and two hundred billion tweets every year. Same for TikTok, Instagram and many other social media platforms where every business targeted audience is domiciled. There is a constant war going on for social media users’ attention and it is easy for a company to lose the war if the company is not playing the game right. A lot of social media users (your potential audience) are already withdrawing from the online space as a result of social media fatigue.

So, here are the questions;

• How do you as a company win a war that you did not start?
• How do you capture the attention of a generation that is always dancing on social media and care less about what you as a brand are doing on the social media space? They don’t even know you.
• How do you capture the attention of your audience who see hundreds of pieces of content (information) on social media every day?

It is a must that you as a company have a fair share of the 8 to 12 seconds that your audience is willing to dish out to any content that piques their interest online. Without that attention, you won’t get your message across, you’ll have trouble sustaining whatever interest there is, and you won’t have established your leadership and control. There are three E’s that your content must embody on social media if you are going to capture the attention of your audience on social media. They are;

1. Educate
2. Entertain
3. Engage

There is a caveat attached to the three E’s listed above. Everybody cannot be your audience. If your goal is to appeal to everyone, you should instead have multiple target markets that you can define and market to accordingly. The 3 E’s can also be said to be the motivation behind the embrace of the internet. People use the internet to communicate, gather information, transact personal and professional business, and entertain themselves. Winning the attention economy in the digital economy era war can only be possible if your content seat amid the intent to why people use the internet. So, let’s dive in.

EDUCATE — Market education is a tactic that helps you get new customers and retain existing ones by teaching the audience. Millions of people use different search engine platforms to search for content to educate themselves every day. Education as we all believe provides stability in life, and it’s something that no one can ever take away from the owner. One of the reasons your potential audience use the internet is because they want to be educated. The purpose of that education is left to the kind of value that your brand brings to the table. Educate your audience, and you will build trust. The more you share your knowledge, the more digital natives will come to trust you. They will start to see you as the expert, and you will find that they will engage more with your content. Convincing your audience to take action after you have built a connection with them at this stage is always easy. The universe operates through dynamic exchange — It is called the law of giving and receiving. Every relationship is one of give and take, because giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe. If you give your audience what they want, they will reward you with their attention and help you get a quantifiable return on investment on your investment on social media.

Here are four reasons why educating your audience online is beneficial:

• Increased Reach: By educating your audience online, you can reach a larger and more diverse audience. The internet allows you to share your content with people from all over the world, regardless of their location.
• Trust Building: By providing educational content, you can build trust with your audience. People are more likely to trust a brand that they feel they understand and have a relationship with.
• Measurable Results: You can easily measure the results of your online education efforts through analytics tools like Google Analytics. This data can help you refine your approach and improve your content for future efforts
• Improved Engagement: Educating your audience online provides opportunities for increased engagement. Interactive elements like quizzes, surveys, and live chats can help keep your audience interested and engaged.

ENTERTAIN — According to divineyouwellness, entertainment can distract you from the stress-causing factors in your life. Our body releases endorphins when we participate in entertaining activities. This chemical is known to relieve stress and pain. Therefore, entertainment can bring a degree of happiness into our lives. Our brains need entertainment to survive, even if otherwise our survival is granted. It doesn’t have to be one form in particular, as long as it’s stimulating enough for our brain. The quickest and most effective way to establish a connection with your audience is to entertain them. One of the reasons they are on the internet is because they want to be entertained. Find creative ways to stimulate your audience’s brains in a way that attracts your brand to an emotion. This form of marketing is called entertainment marketing. Entertainment marketing allows you to market your product or brand in a way that consumers enjoy and are prone to share with friends and family. Entertaining content has significantly more engagement than static content, which makes it a compelling market strategy that you can deploy and use to your advantage when pushing out content on social media.

Here are four reasons why it is believed that every brand should entertain its audience online:

• Building brand awareness: Entertaining content can be shared and viral, which can result in increased exposure for your brand, helping you build brand awareness and reach new audiences.
• Attention-grabbing: By entertaining their audience, brands can grab their attention and keep them engaged. This will help increase the likelihood of their content being shared and viewed by more people.
• Humanization: By entertaining their audience, brands can show their human side and connect with their audience on a more personal level. This can help build a stronger brand relationship with their audience.
• Building brand awareness: Entertaining content can be shared and viral, which can result in increased exposure for your brand, helping you build brand awareness and reach new audiences.

ENGAGE — Now that you’ve created educative and entertaining content, the next step is to engage with your audience when they engage with your content or bring up conversations that have your brand as the subject. Neuroscience suggests that humans are neurologically wired to connect with others; Human connection is a deep bond that’s formed between people when they feel seen and valued. During an authentic human connection, people exchange positive energy with one another and build trust. Social media users see brands in a new light as their demands for this kind of connection grow stronger. The brands emerging as leaders online focus on building genuine relationships by engaging with their audience online and offline. Having better social media engagement means that your audience has a stronger relationship with your brand. This in turn provides you with more opportunities to build brand loyalty, increase word-of-mouth referrals and increase sales. Engaging with your audience online will ensure that you always know how your customers feel about your product or service, the qualities that they value, and any areas of improvement needed to provide a better experience. People want to know that they are relating to humans and not robots.

Here are five reasons why every brand should engage with its followers online.

• Community Building: By engaging with followers online, brands can build a sense of community around their products or services, which can help increase customer loyalty and referrals.
• Improved Reputation: Engaging with followers online can help improve a brand’s reputation by demonstrating their commitment to customer service and their willingness to listen to and address customer concerns.
• Targeted Marketing: Engaging with followers online allows brands to gather valuable data and insights on their target audience, which can inform their marketing strategies and improve their ability to reach their target audience.
• Improved Reputation: Engaging with followers online can help improve a brand’s reputation by demonstrating their commitment to customer service and their willingness to listen to and address customer concerns.
• Customer Feedback: Engaging with followers online allows brands to receive valuable feedback from their customers and make necessary improvements to their products or services.