Trends

By Daniel Lara

There are many things in my life that I love, and dinner parties are one of them. Before I hosted my first ever soirée, my mother made it a point to instill a statement in my head. “Know your guests,” she said. While she also said, “Your chicken tends to be dry,” it was, “Know your guests,” that stuck with me for years—even to this day.

At first it took me some time to really understand what she meant, but after hosting a few parties it all became crystal clear. When you’re hosting a dinner party, you’re essentially creating an experience, and the best experiences are shaped by the preferences and behaviors of your guests. To this point, the more I knew about my guests, the more I was able to personalize aspects of an event for each person—making them feel valued and special. 

And isn’t that what we’re all about on social? As marketers, aren’t we hosting experiences on social media networks so that customers feel valued and special? It’s like an ongoing dinner party with an open invitation—one where we hope audiences happily consume our content and share their enjoyment with others. As such, knowing our audience is imperative to the success of our social strategy.

And that’s what we’ve done here. For this piece, we’ve mined through reports about age to gain more insight into a few audience segments prevalent on social. More specifically, we’re examining the four primary living generations: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. You see, your audiences will be comprised of all ages, so it’s necessary that we analyze behaviors and preferences in aggregate. It’s the only scalable way to create personalized content that will resonate with large audiences. By getting to know these generation types, you will be able sift through your own data to identify trends and opportunities that can help you build a more informed content strategy.