By now, you’ve probably heard all about Generation Z, the first generation to grow up in an entirely digital world.

Gen Z is a smart, connected generation of consumers. Your marketing personalization must evolve to meet the demands and expectations of this younger audience.

There’s already a huge pool of information about Generation Z. So we’ve got an at least decent idea of what appeals to them.

If you’re looking for a way to update your social media marketing to appeal to Generation Z, try these tactics.

Use user-generated content

Generation Z not only consumes more digital content than any previous generation, but they also create more than any other.

Online communication and communities are staples for Generation Z. User-generated content (UGC) organically depicts a style that young audiences can identify with and naturally integrates with online communities.

Ask your customers to send videos or pictures with your product and solicit video reviews. Give them a platform to speak for themselves about your product. You’ll build customer loyalty and gather new followers.

Work with micro influencers

Celebrity endorsements have experienced declining success among Generation Z. Gen Z has a ton of information at their fingertips. They recognize the disconnect between themselves and most celebrities.

Generation Z responds much better to people who they feel have similar experiences. Micro-influencers are great for relating to Generation Z because they’re active members of the communities they speak to, and they aren’t so popular that they lose touch with their audience.

There’s a catch here, though. Endorsements and content from your micro-influencers shouldn’t look like advertising. It needs to be authentic content. The promotional parts should be quick and unintrusive.

Use your values

The younger generation is very socially and globally conscious. They want to buy from companies that have a strong moral backbone.

So, ensure that you’re doing the right thing. It’s harder than ever to hide shady stuff. People will find out.

Then just be transparent. Use your social media channels to give audiences a look inside your offices or your production floor. Let them see how the people in your company are treated.

Just remember to be genuine about it. Flaunting your business culture will likely backfire.

Communicate via text

Young people almost never use voicemail and email is less popular than it is with millennials. Generation Z texts and communicates through chat apps a lot.

So reach out to them through their preferred communication channels. Open rates can go up to 98% — use SMS whenever you can and respond to messages in messenger apps. With such high engagement, partnering with an SMS gateway provider can help streamline these communications, making it easier to reach your audience reliably and at scale.

Marketing is at its best when there’s a two-way conversation. So use the lines of communication that connect to the people you’re trying to reach.

Use video

Social media is almost ubiquitous now. Young people move through their timelines very quickly and static posts like text and pictures are pretty standard.

Video stands out in the social landscape. Yes, eventually video will be as commonplace as images.

But right now, video is one of the best ways to stand out on timelines, especially to audiences who have grown up cruising timelines.

Give information in eight seconds

Recent research suggests that attention spans have shortened to eight seconds. An entire article could be written about this data itself.

But, that means that you need to compress your messages. You need to get attention and quickly communicate something useful. Fortunately, social media is very conducive to quick messaging.

Focus on getting your message across or telling the customer what the benefit of engaging with your content is in the first eight seconds. Also keep most of your videos under three minutes.

Marketing to a new generation might seem daunting. But, if you have another look at these tips, it’s not a huge leap from what works on older generations.

The fundamentals of human behavior haven’t changed. But the environment we live in has. Marketing to Generation Z is simply a matter of updating your marketing so it fits into this new digital environment.

Tag us on your social media channels and let us know how you reach out to Generation Z. If you’re part of Generation Z, tell us what you think of these tips.

by James Miller