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As one of the leading UK consultancies dealing with the
education sector, Liquid works with more than 50 schools, academies
and colleges, communicating with both young people and their
parents.
From pester power to peer pressure, we understand how the fast
changing communications landscape stretches from Facebook and
Twitter to BBM and pingchat. Young people want their information in
bite size chunks, they want to watch their newspapers and have the
freedom to respond. Here, teenager Harry Ogier gives his thoughts
on what does and doesn't work when it comes to engaging young
people.
Harry completed work experience last year in Liquid's Guernsey
office:
Social networking sites are becoming bigger. Facebook has 800
million users - a huge proportion of the world's total population,
all on one website. What does this mean for companies and how they
reach out to their youth audience?
As a teenager, I have grown up with the internet. It's been
around for all of my life and I can't really imagine a world
without it. I rely on it hugely, whether for researching
information for a school project, connecting with friends or
playing online games with people from around the world.
With a massive percentage of teenagers using social networking
sites such as Facebook and Twitter, there's an unprecedented
opportunity for companies to connect and engage with their
audiences and to grow in popularity.
To make the most of the opportunity, businesses and other
organisations need to understand how their audiences use social
media. Being on Facebook and mainly just reading the home page, I
don't interact with it a lot. The right hand side of the home page
is normally full of advertisements or 'people you may know'. Like
most of my friends, I'll typically ignore the adverts. The main way
that I find out about companies is when my friends 'Like' a page.
It'll show up on my news feed that this friend has liked this page,
and whilst I would rarely go and check it out, it does tell me the
company name - and so my awareness of it has increased.
Facebook is definitely one way of gaining an audience; however
one problem is that most people won't join a company's Facebook
page unless they have had an experience with them or already know
about them from elsewhere. Very few teenagers will actually go and
spend the time to read what a company does, just because they saw
their Facebook page.
In praise of Twitter
The main social networking site I use is Twitter - and if
companies are looking to connect with the general public, using
Twitter is a great way to go about it. By gaining followers and
tweeting out regularly, any company will be able to grow its
following quickly and can communicate in an instant with a large
number of people who are already engaged as they have made a
conscious decision to follow. Using hash tags that are trending -
and having followers retweet or favourite one of their tweets will
also increase their exposure to a wider audience.
The internet and social networking sites are where my generation
gain their knowledge from. If a company is looking to promote
itself and interact with its target audience, using social
networking sites is a great way to go about it.
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