How to Attract a Millennial Audience

Traditional media is in the process of undergoing its greatest evolution yet. Why? To stay relevant with Millennials.

Accustomed to a digitally saturated upbringing and driven by convenience, an entire generation is consuming news on mobile devices and on social channels. This "convenience model" suggests that the balance of power is shifting toward the consumer who searches for simple and seamless ways to consume content, anywhere. With this in mind, we dig into how the PR pros can attract this particular audience. 

Pitch to publications that utilize visuals, as visual storytelling is the easiest way to gain traction among a Millennial audience. 

According to HubSpot, Facebook posts with images get 53 percent more likes and 104 percent more comments than the average post, while tweets with pictures are nearly twice as likely to be retweeted. Content with compelling images receives 94 percent more views than content without because humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. 

According to Omnivideo, if an image is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 1.8 million! Replacing online print media with short video segments will only increase viewership and engagement. Publications such as Refinery29, Dodo, AJ+ and NowThis are utilizing video in order to share content directly on social, making content convenient for consumers to watch and engage with. Pitch them. 

Visual storytelling increases views and engagement, and editors are in the know. With editors of major publications urging journalists to include visual content in articles, you can increase your odds of receiving coverage by distributing multimedia press releases. 

Cision found that multimedia press releases receive 77 percent more traffic, while 55 percent of journalists and media professionals stated in a Business Wire study that they are more likely to review a press release with multimedia. Now, go hire a photographer or videographer! 

In the past year, we have seen the video-enabled Internet rivaling television as a more convenient destination for breaking news. Social media platforms are making news consumption more possible with the introduction of “auto play” to grab the attention of users. 

It is important to note that real-time content must be tailored to individual platforms to be effective in attracting the Millennial audience. Snapchat allows only 10 seconds of visual content at a time, while Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Periscope allow for unlimited live-streaming, effective in covering events. Coachella Music Festival and the DNC are among a very long list of events streamed live over the past year. 

Subscriber-based email newsletters have recently been resurrected due to their convenience. Lenny Letter, Rookie Mag and Goop may even be more convenient than the monster that is social media.   

Just as successful publications are placing content where consumers already are (social media), newsletters are sending content directly to consumers via the original social channel that everyone has -- email. 

Subscriber-based e-newsletters are also much more effective, receiving more clicks than click-baiting social posts. You see, email marketing is targeted at consumers who have already indicated an interest in your product by signing up for the newsletter. This means they are increasingly likely to open it and share via that old 'forward' feature.