Paying attention to the habits of teenagers is probably not the first thing on most marketers’ agendas – especially when we are forced to read about them in newspapers and online each day – but what if they could actually offer some useful content marketing advice? Hear us out. Constantly making new friends, involving themselves in all of the latest drama, keeping up-to-speed with the latest trends and making sure everybody knows it? They sound like pretty good content marketers to us! Here are four content marketing lessons teenagers could teach you…
Communicate non-stop
We constantly tut-tut at those teenagers who seem to be constantly on their smartphones or sat eating dinner with a laptop in front of them, but with the number of contacts they’ve managed to accumulate both in their phonebook and online they must be doing something right! Rather than scheduling a weekly newsletter or talking to your clients only when they reach out to you first, why not make the first move and engage with them as often as you can? Don’t ignore social media platforms because you don’t understand them (or just can’t stand them), take the time to familiarise yourself with the way things work just like Britain’s teenagers and start attracting new customers by being helpful and friendly online.
Create the right image
When it comes to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, teenagers often take the opportunity to create enhanced profiles for themselves. They are often very careful about who they follow and who they allow to follow them because they want to portray a certain image online. They only want to follow the ‘cool’ celebrities and retweet ‘quirky’ or ‘insightful’ things people say so they can appear intelligent and trendy. To a certain extent, you ought to be doing the same. If you want to portray a certain brand image to your customers and clients or promote specific values then you’ll need to follow and engage with those who are relevant to your business.
Get with the times
You won’t catch teenagers tweeting or posting about something that happened weeks ago, so why should you? The digital world moves at a rapid pace so if you’re not on the ball and ready to report straight away you may as well just forget it. News travels fast so if you’re planning on making a big revelation or posting some exciting news it might be best to check it hasn’t already been mentioned. You want to work toward making your audience believe you are significant and a useful source of innovative and interesting information, so it is important that the content you post is not outdated.
Tell stories
We’re not suggesting you lie to get what you want, as teenagers sometimes do, instead we’re encouraging you to do more than simply sell your business through your content. Tell your audience a story, offer them additional helpful advice and create interesting shareable content that your readers will want to pass on. The best articles are often the ones that take a different approach, discuss matters from various points of view and offer a new perspective. You can always include a call-to-action at the end, but ensure your content is exciting and worth talking about first.
Stand out
No teenager wants to be a wallflower and go unnoticed, which is why so many choose to act rebellious. Instead of going to get your tongue pierced or staging a protest in the middle of a meeting, ensure your business stands out and moves higher up the search engine rankings by creating content with shout-out shareability and which includes important keywords. Crowdbait knows all about search engine optimisation and how to create fantastic content, so be sure to contact the team if you need help with your content strategy.
You see, there are a few things teenagers can teach us, if not how to ride a wrecking ball like a pro or pose for a perfect selfie…