Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Generation Y: Want Me to Buy, Find Me Online
I am a card-carrying member of Generation X, the slacker, opt-out, fix-the-world-on-our-terms group.
In all deference to the people who built the Internet and Web and Generation Y or the Millenials, we are the reason you are reading this online. Before us, computers and social technology were confined to niche areas. Today, the Web exists because we adopted and built up these vast networks.
Unfortunately for my brethren and above (re: the Baby Boomers), that doesn't actually mean much.
The rules and establishment we made, loose as it was, has been eroded by a new generation of users and emerging software tools that make communing online much, much easier.
Counter-intuitively, that has made it much harder to reach your audience because they aren't looking for you. In fact, they don't care much about you all. But they have big buying power.
Generation Y or the Millennials expect you to actively court them, but not through banners and billboards. They want the courting: the social networks, the communication systems, the widgets, the ring tones. They want the whole nine yards. Then -- if they feel up to it -- they will help you promote what they do.
And there's a really good chance you haven't heard about the places they hang out. You can't just hit Facebook and expect to score big. You need to dig into their world, which increasingly exist on the Web and on mobile devices. You have to find their network, listen and figure out what you can give them.
Posted By Brad King at 03:31 PM
Permanent Link: Generation Y: Want Me to Buy, Find Me Online
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