Our team breaks down Simon Sinek’s viral video on millennials in simple tips for better brand engagement.
Noted consultant, TED speaker and author Simon Sinek’s viral video on “Millennials in the workplace” got a lot of us here at Vinfotech vSocial™ Lab a little hurt. Okay, honestly, a lot hurt. It spoke of some bitter truths about us – millennials. In the business that we are in, we are both sellers and consumers. So you know, we don’t have to ‘get into the shoes’ of the users since we were born with the shoes.
But first things first. Does this viral video by Sinek have any important insights into today’s consumer behavior? Or employee engagement (hence the title)? Why has it hurt so many people?
Simon quotes various studies to say that millennials “want to work at a place with a purpose, they want to make an impact (whatever that means), they want free food and bean bags. They get this. Yet, they are still not happy.”
1. Failed parenting strategies: They were told they were special, they can have anything they want in life just because they want it. The truth sank in later.
2. Addiction to technology: Impact of social media and cell phones releases a chemical called Dopamine – the happiness hormone. This addictive chemical is also released when they smoke, gamble or drink. It numbs stress levels, creates a false well-being. So millennials find it hard to find real relationships outside social media.
3. Insensitive impatience: Millennials grew up in a world of instant gratification. And when they get this, they don’t feel the need of learning real world social skills.
4. Corporate environment: Millennials were put in corporate environments that care more about a year than a lifetime or gains than actual joy.
So how can you make the millennials – who may be your customers or your employees – really happy?
We at Vinfotech vSocial™ Lab came up with three strategies to suggest to our clients wishing to engage millennial customers through their businesses.
1. Teach them skills, instill confidence: ‘Educate’ your customer is still the BEST business strategy. Associate your product, service or social network with a certain skill. For instance, a travel company must teach skills like camping or swimming or ski-ing as part of their package. Or an enterprise must invest in skill-learning exercises for employees.
2. Sell them ideas not products: Of course millennials are most vulnerable while on social media looking for instant gratification and may buy your products. But for long-term branding, you need to become their friends in need, you need to tell great stories and associate interesting ideas with your brand.
3. Early birds are your best ads: If you engage your employees or customers with great business or product story telling initially, you will win an army of early birds. They will eventually spread the word about your service, application or product.
Millennials are most vulnerable while on social media looking for instant gratification and may buy your products.
Allow us to build you a social branding that your millennial customers will love. How?
At Vinfotech, we recommend brands to build fruitful communities around their businesses. That’s because millennials are increasingly untrusting of bigger social networks, they are moving to smaller platforms. They are more likely to trust a business in an environment where they can empathize and get solutions to their day-to-day problems. Banana Bandy (now IndieFolio) is one such community that we built for creative professionals acting on the vision of a young entrepreneur Kavan Antani. Most of its 12,000 users are younger millennials who got a trustworthy community to showcase creative talent.
A noted Melanoid crusader Tariq Nasheed felt very strongly that African-Americans were restricted in voicing their concerns and opinions on public social networks such as Facebook. He hired Vinfotech to create a mobile social network dedicated to Melanoid community called MoorUs where users would get complete freedom to express their thoughts and opinions. A strong idea of Melanoid freedom of speech gave birth to a powerful social network which engaged like-minded users. We also built revenue models around the social network so the platform could become a profit-making business.
We stress a lot on winning the initial set of users on a social network application for the brand buzz that any business needs. We know a thing or two about building a strong user base and we have done that for several clients who have found our strategy effective in the long run.
If you have any customer engagement ideas, tell us. We are game.
Vinfotech creates world's best social networks for brands, interest groups and sports fans. We promise initial set of real engaged users to put turbo in your social network growth. Our award winning software vSocial™ allows us to build stellar customized communities faster and better. Our customers include Aston Martin, Burberry, Arabian Gulf League and Snapdeal.