TV stations are more likely to woo young adults by fostering online conversation about news stories rather than by posting hard news headlines. Another tactic is to hire people in their 20s to whom social media is second nature.
NAB 2014
How To Attract Your Market’s Millennials
If local TV news operations want to reach millennials, apparently they have to speak their target audience’s language — and on platforms where they’ll listen.
“As a TV station we don’t need to sit on pillars and talk down to people,” said Barrett Tyron, a social media producer at KLAS Las Vegas. “We have to drive them with discussion, and eventually they’ll tune in.”
Tyron’s comments were part of a panel discussion on local TV reaching millennials, which was held Wednesday at the NAB Show in Las Vegas.
Panelists — the majority of who were millennials themselves — said using social media is key to hooking 18-34 year-old viewers, but you can’t do it using the same tactics used on TV.
Tyron said TV stations are more likely to woo young adults by fostering online conversation about news stories rather than by posting hard news headlines. For instance, the station recently used social media to interest millennials in a recent story about a change in traffic accident investigations by putting the issue on Facebook and soliciting questions from users. KLAS then drove them to a newscast by answering those questions on-air.
“We let them lead the discussion,” Tyron said.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
Carly Mallenbaum, a 25-year-old online editor at USA Today, said reaching her peers could be even simpler than that. “I think the key is just to hire people in their 20s. They will know how to reach people their own age,” she said.
“In the newsroom, people my age know how to cover stories on Twitter. This is second nature to us at this point,” Mallenbaum added.
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