A variety of demographics and markets are out there, with each of them holding unique potential for bloggers, marketers and fan pages alike. It can be hard to know where to begin, but many analytic and marketing tools exist to help you find the target demographic for your niche. In many cases, millennials are a prime group for targeting, but few traditional marketers know how to reach this elusive and skeptical group. Twitter recently released a comprehensive guide for reaching millennials through its social network, which may come in handy for your future marketing efforts. Below, we’ll outline the findings so that you can quickly glean what you should and should not be doing to earn attention and trust from today’s young adults.

Mobile is King

Whether you are marketing via a paid solution or using the virality of the network, you must keep mobile in mind. The study released by Twitter shows that 4 in 5 millennials use Twitter through a mobile device, which means pinging for SEO in a traditional sense will yield much less benefit. Targeted advertising campaigns should be optimized for mobile, and you should also ensure that any landing pages are mobile friendly. Without these accommodations, you are unlikely to reach this target-rich audience that is known for its expectations of instant gratification and convenience. Poorly formatted landing pages or desktop advertising will only yield a fraction of the potential traffic a mobile campaign can provide.

Make It Fun

Most younger users of Twitter are on the network for entertainment and an escape from the mundane – they’re not as interested in news or long-winded reports like many other niches. Because of this, you’ll want to ensure that your marketing techniques incorporate fun elements in order to get (and keep) their attention. Promotion of an interesting video, the discussion of a new online game or a fun contest that involves tweets and hashtags are great ways to engage this audience. You’ll find that these efforts may not work for other audiences, but at the same time, the tactics used for other demographics will probably not work for millennials. In other words, your millennial strategy has to be completely unique when compared to those for other age groups.

Live Events = Opportunity

Whenever you run a marketing campaign, it can be easy to “phone it in”. This means creating a variety of different campaigns and letting them run for days on end. When it comes to millennials, this may not be a good idea in every day. While pinging for SEO requires consistency and stability, reaching millennials through marketing requires a dynamic approach. Live events (sports games, awards shows, presidential debates, etc.) can be a great time to run marketing efforts on Twitter and incorporate/promote the use of hashtags. Many successful marketing campaigns will encourage millennials to weigh in with their thoughts on a live event by using a specific hashtag. This not only can create discussion, but will also allow you to simultaneously promote a product or service alongside it.