If you are a pediatrician, business or other health professional catering to adolescents and teens to age 21, your market is the Gen Z crowd. Born between 1995 and 2012, they grew up with technology and rapid change.  They have lived their entire life with cellphones, WiFi and computers.

This is the first clue on how to reach them. According to a study published in Forbes  the Gen Z’ers spend roughly 74% of their free time online. They live in the world of social media and if you want to find them, this is where your prospective patients and current ones are.

7 Tips to reach Gen Z with Social Media

1. Be Mobile 

Generation Zs are attached to their smartphones and iWatches. They are a mobile-first generation. What this means for you is that your professional website and everything that you publish online must be optimized for smartphone screens and be mobile-ready.

No matter how valuable your messages are, if they can’t be read, you will be deleted and ignored. A good way to look at this now since mobile is key to the present and future, is that your content should actually be created for mobile and then can be amended for desktop screens secondly.

What this also means to you is that since you are trying to drive their traffic back to your website, the Gen Z online experience must be seamless.

2. Post videos on YouTube

According to figures revealed during SXSW,  while Gen Zers watch less than 30 minutes of cable TV daily, they see an average of 2 to 4 hours of YouTube videos per day- their primary entertainment source.

Thus, when doing social media marketing,  video content should be a key strategy. Not only that, video content shared on social platforms should be recycled and shared on YouTube to increase a wider net of visibility.

3. Share Images, Videos and  Stories on Instagram

Instagram Stories was launched August, 2016. It is widely believed to have been a direct copy of Snapchat, working in an almost identical way to Snapchat. However, it has surpassed Snapchat in popularity. As of April 2017, 40 million more people use Instagram Stories than use Snapchat.

The thing is though, unlike YouTube, short videos on Instagram disappear within one day of viewing.  The advantage here is that you can annotate content with filters, drawings, stickers and comments.

4.  Snapchat

According to a story cited in The Drum, 79% of respondents said they used Snapchat at least once per day with 51% of respondents logging Snapchat use about 11 times daily.

The bottom line: members of Generation Z love using Snapchat, a platform not used by older generations.  This gives Gen Zs the security to share their personal information on the site.

5. Get Insights into the Minds of Gen Z’ers through interviews

Interview some members of Generation Z who are following you or your competitors on social media. If this is not realistic, then try using a social media analytics tool.

Because Instagram is such a popular platform for Gen Zers, it may be worth investing in an Instagram analytics platform that helps understand what drives the most engagement and resonates with this increasingly important market.

6. Familiarize yourself with Brands that Gen Z use

Assess the brands making inroads with Gen Z. For example, according to AdWeek, Gen Zers love Nike, Forever 21 and Brandy Melville (an upstart women’s clothing company).

6. Get To Know Gen Z influencers

Influencer marketing is only on the rise. Influencers  have built loyal followers thanks to YouTube vlogs, clever Vine videos and  Snapchat. Marketers interested in engaging Generation Zers should know and follow the influencers who appeal to this generation.

7. Know What’s In

Google recently conducted an extensive study to understand what Generation Z members think is in, or as they say, “lit”.  One respondent said, “When I think ‘cool,’ I imagine companies that do great things for customers/employees or beautiful/unusual products.”

Brands like YouTube, Amazon and Netflix were cool because of the impact these companies were clearly having on the world. This also aligns with another finding of the study, which was that, for both girls and boys, technology ranked as the coolest category.

Recap

Generation Z represents a big opportunity for you to connect with a growing segment of your target audience. In order to connect, embrace social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, as well as video and mobile-first strategies.

Need help starting this or adding content and videos?  No worries.  Give a shout out to 516-647-3002 and we can get you started.