For
news outlets, creating and sharing content online is more important now than
ever. Given our increasingly digital world, appealing to millennial readers by
focusing on making web content more accessible isn’t an option—it’s a
requirement of the industry. As a Northwestern student specializing in
journalism and integrated marketing communications, I’ve found two articles
that I think you will find interesting as you consider how to best reach millennial
news consumers.
In
her article for Business Insider, Audrey Schomer notes that millennials (age
21-37) consume a mere 8,766 minutes of news a year on average compared to their
older counterparts, who consume closer to 30,103 minutes a day. Yet she also highlights
the fact that when millenials do
consume news, its digital reach is greater than it is to that same older age
group—digital news reaches 88% of millennials. A last important note from
Schomer’s article—many people in this demographic highlight convenience as
their favorite aspect of social media; further, about half (48%) of social
media news consumers ages 18-29 felt that accessing news on social made them
better informed. Thus, it stands to reason that streamlining web content would
increase millennial consumption of news.
A
graphic from a 2018 Nielsen study on digital media use.
As per the graph above, Nielsen
conducted a study in July of 2018 that resulted in a shocking outcome—American
adults spend over 11 hours a day listening to, watching, reading, and
interacting with digital media. Notably, smartphones are the tool that enables
a great deal of this usage. Over 72% of the 18-34 demographic view video
content on social networking sites at least once a day, if not more; various
digital platforms allow consumers to stay connected to the digital world to a
greater extent than they ever have before. Younger generations tend to devote
the majority of their time to smartphones and computers instead of TV; the
portability of new devices allows adults older than 18 to spend an average of
45 minutes a day on social media—in large part on smartphones.
Given
these insights, I’ve developed three action items that will help news outlets
make their content more accessible to millennial consumers:
·
Turn to social.
o
Digital
news reaches 88% of millennials while national TV news reaches 61% of them;
thus, providers would do better to produce news for social to hit a wider
target demographic.
·
Convenience is key.
o
Since
digital consumers see so much media every day, they will not take the extra
time to investigate materials that aren’t convenient to access, meaning that
news agencies / marketing firms need to make sure their digital material is
right at consumers’ fingers.
·
Hook consumers early.
o
Digital
consumers spend, on average, 11 hours interacting with digital media a day—they
see a lot of news, so make content interesting/interactive to get clicks.
Effective use of
digital content can make or break a news outlet, and the industry must
implement it to grow.
