Tag Archives: adults

7 ways millennials use social media to communicate

Posted on by
Reply

Ryan  Bradley Thompson is the lead social marketing strategist at Mark Travel Corporation. He loves to bike, read, write, and play music in bands.

“How millennial are you?”

This was a question I asked myself a few days ago when Ragan’s Millennial Mafia asked me to write a guest post for them. Given the fact that I was just outside of the traditional metric of a millennial (someone who was born “after 1980”), I wasn’t sure I could represent a millennial’s perspective.

But after taking the Pew Research Center quiz, I found out that I’m 85 percent millennial.

And according to Wikipedia, I still might qualify:

As there are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s.

Ha!

Well, not only did I just shave a generation off my life, but I’m no longer a pencil-pushing Gen Xer. After all, I am 85% millennial, right?

Well sort of…

While I can’t go back and experience my teen years and early twenties again, I do communicate with the mindset of a millennial.

Here’s how:

  1. Texting. It’s quick and easy. I love it. SMS, MMS, Y-E-S. Beats a phone call 99 times out 100.
  2. Twitter. It’s social savvy and full of digital natives like myself. I’ve tweeted with some of my favorite people and some of them have written back.
  3. Facebook. As a social marketing professional, I use Facebook on the job, but also personally. Facebook is my phone book, my rolodex, and a walled garden of content and goodness—filled with my friends and rich online experiences.
  4. Email. I receive about 300 emails a day, plus hundreds of RSS feeds. HINT: You can replace Gmail ads with social profiles and a Firefox install called Rapportive.
  5. iPad. This is all about the user experience. I use apps such as Zite and Flipboard for nearly everything. And if I like a story I read, I don’t think twice about sharing it with friends.
  6. Face to Face. This is the best and most rewarding way to communicate with people. However, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time for it. (Tear.)
  7. Phone. On a night that I’m not going out, it’s great to call a friend and catch up. But I probably already know what he or she is up to, since I just checked their Facebook status on my smartphone.