Capture Your Audience and Keep Them Too
Grow your business, Monitoring, SEO tips |
Image by jessicalrone
The current generation of audience is whimsically being referred to as the Nintendo Generation by some marketing and media entities. And like most archetypes, it has many characteristics that loosely define and differentiate it from other generations, including a much progressive attitude when it comes to accepting changes and opportunities with seamless and much shorter acclimatization periods. As such, developments in technology, new products, cultural trends and arising belief systems simply do not faze it.
Its nomenclature is apt and descriptive: a generation born and raised with technology deeply integrated during its formative years and thus has a constant demand for increasingly compelling stimuli and requires heavy interaction to be engaged in almost anything. They generally thrive on communities online and make up a large percentage of social network users, easily making this generation the largest percentage of patrons of Web services and, to a larger degree, your target audience. So to be able to grab and keep its attention on any online marketing campaign, its aforementioned characteristics must be taken in consideration.
While a quick review of your site would reveal if your contents are sufficiently compelling for your readers, utilizing third-party tracking tools should give you an idea at how your audience is responding. Sure, this is Marketing 101, but the manner of the delivery now varies since we have the Nintendo Generation on the spotlight. Also, how exactly do you elicit response online? Here we have a two proven suggestions to add an extra layer to the time-tested online marketing site standards to grab your audience and keep them too.
Humor
 Image by jeffhall2069 |
Just as every news and feature article is cemented with journalism’s long-time credo to inform, educate and entertain, so should your Web site or blog’s content. While most easily apply the “inform” and the “educate” aspects by way of straightforward reporting, the “entertainment,” however, is equally important.
Aside from shifting to a more narrative writing approach, one of the best ways to make your site’s overall user experience fun and engaging is by injecting humor into your posts. Not only will this make reading much more interesting from a visitor’s point of view, it will also give your site a youthful personality the Nintendo Generation can easily relate to. And as with anything with a personality, it becomes easier to form connections at an intimate level, resulting in repeat visits and easy recommendations for potential new users and patrons.
Web sites from Gawker Media, the Cheezburger Network, Cracked and, of course, The Onion have successfully utilized humor very well and have developed their own cult following that expands to memes, cross platform marketing opportunities and merchandise among other outlets.
Keep in mind though to use humor sparingly, because applying it liberally doesn’t always work. Know your niche and never forget to consider both your current audience and target demographic, and the brand that you are representing whenever writing blog posts or when mapping out a strategy. These will give you a pretty good idea of the brand of humor and the limits you can work by.
For instance, random and blatantly adult-themed jokes and tasteless commentaries are the bread and butter of the Distorted View’s podcast and its accompanying site. While this may turn people off, it works for the site because its brand of humor and content quality are apt for its chosen niche and appealing to its demographic. This drives its ever-growing flock of devotees to its podcast, a majority of which have paid to gain access to its expanded contents and other features. Its large subscriber base, in turn, also shows its viability as an advertising outlet, attracting a company offer sponsorship.
Opinions
 Image by heiressanj |
Everyone loves to share their opinions. You can see this with microblogging sites, message boards and the long stretches of site comments and almost every type of activity posted on Facebook’s news feed. This follows the credence that whether you prefer to engage with your online identity out in the open or you hide under the veil of anonymity, the Internet gives everyone a voice. And what better way to engage your audience than offer your site as a platform for discussion.
Each post can elicit a good amount of response on the comments section (or even more depending on your subject matter) but you can give it a significant boost by actually asking your readers for their opinions. Consider this: when a question is presented, whether verbally directed at you or if you happen to see one emblazoned on some billboard as you drive by a highway, it automatically yields a subconscious reaction and an urge to respond.
Needless to say, responding to questions make for an engaging experience since it gives your site an entirely new dynamic in terms of building rapport with your readers. It also makes learning a two-way process since they get information off your site and you get to learn more about both your current audience and your target demographic and whether your strategy is effective or not. Their two cents can help you further develop your site’s contents and, when combined with your site stats, it can also give you ideas on the direction your campaign is taking and map out refinements to improve it.
Popularity: 15% [?]
RSpears @ March 23, 2010
[...] a previous post, we talked about two general concepts being applied today to tickle the Nintendo Generation’s [...]