It’s no secret that younger generations (Millennials, Gen Z) spend a lot of time on social media. As those generations grow up, join your organization, and move into leadership roles in your industry, it’ll become even more important for your organization to have a strategy for using social media to engage them.
Part of that means trying new things! By monitoring a variety of accounts on each social platform, you can easily pick out new trends that are resonating with young professionals and explore how they fit into your organization’s current strategy.
To help get you started, we’ve outlined three different types of social media content that are great for engagement:
Behind the scenes
Everyone loves a peek behind the curtain. What’s great about this kind of content is, it doesn’t take a lot of work or have to be particularly “polished.” In fact, it’s better to be authentic! Shoot a quick video or grab some impromptu pictures to show off that authenticity when you’re gearing up for a big event, having fun around the office, putting together new member welcome packets, etc.
For example, we recently hosted a Virtual Training event for our users and snapped some pictures of our trainers mid-session:
Let them ask you questions
Speaking of authentic content, soliciting questions from your audience is a great way to accomplish that. Now, you’ll want to ask about a specific topic (“Do you have any questions about our new webinar offerings?” or “X event is coming up! What do you need to know?”) rather than opening yourself up to a general Q&A. That way, you can address specific concerns and insert yourself into conversations your members may be having.
The key, however, to this type of content is answering as many questions as you can publicly. The “Questions” feature on Instagram Stories is a great tool: You can ask the question, and then answer it directly in your story for the rest of your followers to see!
Ask THEM questions
On the flip side, asking your followers a question is a tried and true way to get some engagement out of them, and social media platforms have really caught on to the idea. It used to be that you’d simply post a question in text and rely on your audience to answer in the comments – but over the last few years, many platforms have actually built tools specifically for this type of engagement.
Most notably are polls on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Stories. Not only are polls great for engagement, but they’re also a quick way to gauge your audiences’ thoughts and preferences. Check out some fun examples here.
Another idea? Turn the Questions feature we talked about around and ask your audience a question, and then share their answers. What a great way to spread some knowledge and inspire conversation among members!
Now, all of this to say social media isn’t the only way to engage your young professional members – active and prospective! Get some more tips and guidance on how to engage younger generations for the long-term in our guide:
