Opinion: You can't put artificial barriers between young users and their content. They're simply too accustomed to getting what they want -- now.A new
report from ad agency UniversalMcCann says a lot about what online publishers need to do. One word: Engage.
According to the report, the new "digital divide" splits the population not as much between income or ethnic lines (as conventional wisdom would have it) but between generations. The report focused on "heavy internet users" between 16-49, a group representing about 31% of the US population. The findings discovered that the 16-34 year olds amongst us are, on the whole, a heck of a lot more connected via the Internet than we'd previously thought.
How? Well, first of all they're far more likely than older members of the population to use IM to communicate, with over 75% of the 16-34 year olds surveyed using at least one IIM service to communicate on a regular basis.
They're also heavily into social networking, with over 40% belonging to at least one social networking service. This is twice the percentage of 35-49 year olds using social networking, even considering services such as Ryze, LinkedIn, or AlwaysOn.
They like blogging and file sharing, too. An astounding 71% of respondents in the 16-34 year old range reported that they'd "participated" in blogging activity, with 25% of them maintaining their own blogs (three times as many as the 35-49 year old-sters). One third of the younger set has participated in P2P file sharing, almost three times the amount of older Internet users.
So what's all this mean? Like I said before: engagement. If you look at all these activities, the one common theme is that they're about connecting people together rather than making them passive consumers of information. The heavy users -- the demographic we're all trying to reach -- are about interacting and sharing information, whether that's in the form of blogs, social networking sites, or instant messages.
The message of this is clear, and perhaps best said by David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Digital Communications from McCann: "there is no doubt that we are moving rapidly from a world of passive receptivity to active engagement. No longer can we simply broadcast our messages to a mass audience and hope that our standard metrics of reach and frequency will guarantee success. Accountable engagement innovation is the battlefield of the 21st century..."
Reaching these folks means more than just being hip or tapping into the ever-elusive zeitgeist of the young. Sure, all that stuff is important--make no mistake about that...hip will always be hip-- but the real key with connecting with the younger Internet users lies in giving them the tools to talk back and talk to each other...and you.
How can you engage in "accountable engagement?" First and foremost, don't thwart it. These folks are people who are used to being able to contact pretty much anyone they want any time. Putting barriers in front of that urge goes directly against the way they're used to living their lives and creates bad feelings. Providing open, accessible avenues of communication using media that they're used to -- IM, social networking, and even newer forms like outposts in Second Life-- are vital. Voicejail and blind "contact us" forms (especially when no confirmation comes through) are exactly counter to what they're used to.
Secondly, open up and allow input into what you're doing. Socially generated content is the hallmark of the new hot sites such as Flickr, YouTube, and MySpace. You don't have to take everything or make your site the next YouTube, but it couldn't hurt to have a section where users can participate in the development of new products or suggestions for how to run the site better. This is the participatory generation. Let them participate.
Finally, give up on the idea that you can control every aspect of your brand. Like it or not, once you're out there, you're out there...even more than ever.
While you might be afraid of counter-brand comments on your site (or, worse yet, complaints), you can be sure that your customers are out there talking about you somewhere else.
The same goes for your own communications: for a generation that gets much of it's information from the wild and wooly world of the Blogosphere, well-spun press releases are read for what they are: carefully crafted attempts at manipulation. You don't necessarily have to start blogging, but it might not hurt to read some blogs and take some cues from what works there.
It's time to engage.
Online Media 
