How Millennials Like Consuming Online? Insights From a Gen Y To Make Your Content `Shareable`

No TV, No Newspapers? Where Are They Hiding?

Couple of weeks ago i visited the Wall Street Journal Office in Manhattan with a bunch of other students from NYU Stern`s Entrepreneurship Club. One of the editors posed the million dollar question during our tour: “How many of you read WSJ?” Leave aside reading the news, i was the only one subscriber of print version to put up hands out of a group of more than 20 Millennials. This purely made me feel like a member of special species close to extinction. Remaining of this story will confirm why it is true that my generation already ditched traditional news. But also i will make this post worth your time reading by giving key insights from a Millennial on how to make your content appealing and engaging to other Millennials.

Another staggering insight comes from one of my Masters classes at NYU. We could barely see any hands showing when we were asked how many of us watched TV to get news.

Do you know which words Gen Yers chose to describe news: garbage, lies, one-sided, propaganda, repetitive, boring. Paula Poindexter reveals on her book “Millennials, News, and Social Media: Is News Engagement a Thing of the Past?”

Ok, so Millennials see TV as a nice antique decorative object and newspapers to maybe give a quick glance on the next person sitting to them holding it. How do we catch up with the world then? Online. Social. Screen.

Screen Sells

More than %60 of media interaction is screen based among Millennials and two thirds of U.S. Millennials state mobile device as their primary method of browsing the web and apps according to eMarketer. This generation clearly favors screen as digital natives in every way we interact with life. We are naturally born to it and almost physically attached to it.

Your Friends As Your Chief-Editors

Born as a digital native, a major shortcoming for brands, marketers and publishers is that we have short attention span.(however good news is that natives spend more time on media than immigrants) We are always online but also divided across platforms. We have heuristics on how we value content online. So what makes news appealing to us? Our friends. Today, publishers and brands should understand that our friends have become our editors. By being engaged with social media and the content being delivered to us, our friends are willingly creating a ranking system in our news feeds. That way we now which ones are worth clicking. According to research, %95 of Millennials would rather have a friends` opinion on a brand rather than the brand or third-voice pitching itself. This also applies to news.

So how do we, Millennials, like our content to be served? Again, online,social,mobile.

Online Social Mobile- Now You Talkin`!

Online means digital natives are screen-lovers and we like to merge most of our daily moments and habits with this platform. This also comes with convenience of mobile. Why should we struggle to fold large pages of a newspaper side by side to continue reading where instead we can sway a finger heroically from right to left?

Socialized Content Does Get The Worm

Social means read,liked and confirmed by your friend (your editor-in-chief) This really is an added value to your content. %55 of Millennials click back on content shared by their peers (2.3X more than average) And it is a two-sided way. If you like what you read, you are also likely to share it, too. When i was eye-spying Gen Y at Bobst Library for this post, i have seen many people sharing articles from Slate, Buzzfeed from Facebook chat. Today, brands have to admit one thing. Gone are the days where you can `force sell` your content. If we are not emotionally-engaged to it or it didn`t make us tick, it will fade away. So it is very critical to `speak the language and be relevant`.

Conde Nast Entertainment hired YouTube stars for original media pushes this fall. Working with influencers and creating content with what they are already engaging Millennials with is a winning recipe. “If you’re creating video content, you know that video content is something that is socialized and shared,” said Rochelle Ballard, manager of digital business strategy and analysis at Condé Nast Entertainment, New York. “One way to create that type of content for the millennial audience is to leverage data and insights and find out what resonates with them and what will inspire them to share.”

Feel, Do, Think: Click!

We talk about this in our Consumer Behavior lecture, given by V.P. of Time Magazine Mr. Barry Martin: It used to be think, feel , do among previous generations. Now it is feel, do, think. This explains all, i believe. If we can first have a feeling towards the subject, we start to relate to it. Then it captures our attention. By that time, if we think this was worth reading and our friends need to be aware of this one too, we simply do share it. So feelings precede actions/behaviors in digital world, as well.

Storify Your Content

Not just Millennials, human beings love stories. This is the best format we understand, relate and engage to things. Why do you think Buzzfeed is one of Millennials favorite news source? It grew a staggering %81 from last year. %35 of Buzzfeed`s traffic comes form mobile and 67 million unique visitors every week. I think 3 out of every 5 shared story on my Facebook feed is coming from Buzzfeed. Then what is the recipe?

Buzzfeed bakes storified, emotionally appealing and engaging content with eye-catching funny visuals and gifs.They are telling stories in a way that can engage Gen Y enormously. Remember, Gen Y is image-centric and have an affinity to visual platforms and Buzzfeed makes great use of this media.

I am not telling here every media portal are like Buzzfeed and generally features popular culture content. It is just an example to see what makes this articles go viral, why it outbreaks like a flu virus on Facebook. Many websites mimic this model and they have increased their traffic as well as returning readers month by month.

Get To The Point Fast

Another reason why we love images and visuals. Because it is fast and gets to the point quickly. This is infotainment- Information meets entertainment. Remember that we have short attention spans and really get distracted quickly so infotainment is a good format to overcome this barriers to break into our screen with a nice piece of content.

Also, we look for instant gratification. Ever observed how a Millenial interacts with social media? Speed of their finger scrolling down the news feed? You will understand what i imply by this if you haven`t recognized it yet.

So, do you think your content will flash on our Facebook news feeds next time? Share this post and help Millennials consume content their way!

This post is part of Inbound Marketing Clinic, a research project at NYU SPS