What you need to know to create content for multiple generations

The most effective way to market your growing business is to customize the marketing strategy to your target audience. But with more people of all ages online than ever before, marketers sometimes might need to create content that resonates with multiple generations at once. Marketers will need to understand their similar habits and unique trends to create content that reflects their shared interests to connect with them and inspire them to take action. In this case when we are going to consider 3 generations: Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials.

When and Where

Take in consideration when you are creating your content that Baby Boomers spend more time consuming content than any other generation. And usually the evening, between 8 pm to midnight, is when all three generations consume it. So, post content during this time to reach the largest audience. Also, although each generation consume the content most commonly thru laptops and desktop, don’t forget to optimize for mobile because more than a quarter of Millennials use a mobile device as their primary source for viewing content.

Type:

The type of content they most enjoy seeing online remain consistent across generations Universally liked are blog articles, images, comments, and eBooks meanwhile the least preferred content types are flipbooks, SlideShares, webinars, and white papers. Of course this will also be related with the content length, if you have too many words the end customer can lose interest, so you’d find for the three generations that 300 words appear to be the sweet spot. Now, when you are developing content for an specific niche consider which generation will be your largest audience because each generation has their own unique preference about the genre of the content: Millenials like tech content, Gen X likes content about healthy living and Baby Boomer seek content about world news.

Social Platform:

Facebook remains king in terms of content sharing specially for Baby Boomers and Millenials. Gen X also use Facebook but lead in using YouTube and Twitter for content sharing. Google+ is most popular with Baby Boomers.

Visual content:

Although a majority of each generation is sharing content on Facebook, the type of content they are sharing, especially visuals, varies by each age group. The Baby Boomers prefer more traditional content, such as images and videos. Millennials prefer newer content types, such as memes and GIFs, while Gen X predictably falls in between the two generations in all categories except SlideShares.

Marketing to several generations can be challenging, given the different values and ideas that resonate with each group. It’s essential for marketers to understand the specific types of content that each of their audiences connect with, and align it with their content marketing strategy accordingly to absorb the maximum amount of customers, regardless of age. Although there is no one-size-fits-all campaign, successful marketers can create content that attracts attention of multiple generations and that they will want to share.

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