How a Gen Z consumes content

We corner the market on finding good content 😎

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If you missed the last issue, I wrote about playing the infield shift with your marketing.

My daughter finished her freshman year of college and is home for the summer.

I enjoy learning about how Gen Z consumes media and uses apps. Guess what?

Gen Z will soon be your target audience.

For B2C marketers, they might already be your target audience.

I asked my daughter a few questions about how she consumes content.

Here are some of her media consumption habits:

🐦 Twitter

In high school, Twitter was low on her list of most-used apps.

Back then, Snap dominated, but she’s since deleted that app due to lack of use.

My daughter became involved with her campus radio station and newspaper, covering the school’s sports teams – primarily Men’s and Women’s Hockey.

She does photography and also writes articles.

She’s a student journalist, even though journalism isn’t her major.

As such, Twitter makes a lot of sense.

Image from the Twitter profile of Northeastern's WRBB Sports (@wrbbsports).

She follows other sports journalists on campus, as well as the official accounts for the teams.

She also follows professional journalists who cover sports, news, politics and more.

This summer, Twitter is a top app she checks. She’ll open her feed to see what’s happening in the world.

When news breaks, she often finds out on Twitter.

⏱️ TikTok

TikTok is used for consuming content that’s pure fun. Maybe even to address boredom.

A frequent setting is when she’s lying in bed. She’ll fire up TikTok and scroll through videos.

This process can continue for quite some time 😎

📺 YouTube

My daughter fires up the YouTube app and finds videos in two areas.

The first are videos that the YouTube algorithm recommends based on her past viewing.

Lately, she’s been watching episodes of Saturday Night Live (SNL). She thinks that she watched an episode once and YouTube figured out that she likes the show.

The interesting thing? If SNL didn’t permit their episodes to stream on YouTube, my daughter would never know it exists.

The other way my daughter sees YouTube content is from subscribing to channels.

She only subscribes to two channels. One of them is The Try Guys:

My daughter says that these guys used to produce videos for BuzzFeed, but went out on their own.

They also have a podcast and she listens to it.

Around the Corner

(cont'd)

📷 Instagram

This app used to be higher on my daughter’s list.

It’s the first social media app she used when she got her phone.

These days, she uses it to stay connected with friends from high school and college.

Takeaways

A few things I found interesting:

👉 What’s missing

What’s not on the list? Let’s see:

Magazines (of course!), newspapers (of double course!) and television 📺

Exception: my daughter does follow mainstream media. So even though she doesn’t read The New York Times in print, she reads their content online. NPR content as well, including their news podcast.

👉 Context matters

My daughter will choose a particular app based on a scenario (e.g., lying in bed, wanting to check news, etc.).

She turns to YouTube when she’s cooking or doing chores. As she’s emptying the dishwasher, she presses “play” on a YouTube video and listens in her AirPods.

She chooses videos for which she doesn't have to look at the screen (interesting).

Yes, she says, sometimes this type of content works fine in a podcast.

👉 So long, laptop? 💻

My daughter uses her laptop these days to check email, write content and edit content.

She streams hockey games on the laptop because the viewing area is larger than her phone.

But consuming content?

It’s exclusive to her phone.

And guess what?

When reading longform content, she prefers the thumb-scrolling experience on her phone more than the touchpad scrolling on her laptop.

I strongly prefer my mouse, but my daughter’s preference makes sense because she’s a digital native.

And that concludes my one-person study of Gen Z.

Let me know what you think!

-Dennis.

Next Meetup

Structured Networking Event (Yes, In-Person and with Beer 🍻)

Our last in-person Meetup was at Fieldwork Brewing in San Mateo. Joe Pulizzi, Founder of Content Marketing Institute was our special guest.

Since that Meetup in March 2020, we've been 100% online.

But now we're back! And it's only fitting that we return to Fieldwork Brewing. Two benefits:

We can socially distance outdoors
They have beer

Friend of the Meetup Tod Cordill is visiting from out of town. Come mingle with this expert in online marketing, SaaS, social media and direct mail.

Date:
June 21, 2022, 5 to 8pm PT

Location:
Fieldwork Brewing Company San Mateo
3030 S Delaware St · San Mateo, CA

RSVP:
https://www.meetup.com/bay-area-content-marketing/events/285974810/

Note: Thanks to our sponsors, Hushly, Talend, ToTheWeb and Treasure Data.

Twitter Corner

In each newsletter, I recommend a Twitter user to follow.

This week, I recommend Laurie Kretchmar (@LKhere).

Several years ago, Laurie introduced me to Rich Schwerin (@Greencognito) on Twitter.

Rich inspired me to create the Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup and he's now co-organizer of the group.

In short: without Laurie, the Meetup wouldn't exist!

Laurie has a book coming out titled "Tweet This!: How to Amplify Your Brand on Twitter."

Details (and the pre-order link) in this tweet.

Job Corner

Crowdvocate is a customer marketing platform that makes customer engagement actionable, at scale.

They have two job openings:

Sr. Manager Education and Enablement (job description)
Sr. Manager - Community and Advocacy

The hiring manager is good friend Scott Wilder. Here's Scott:

If you have questions about these openings or want to apply, feel free to contact Scott:

scott.wilder@crowdvocate.com