With their buying power and trend-making prowess, teens and young adults have always been popular targets for interactive marketers. In the past, we’ve looked to email marketing and instant messaging as our means of connecting with this demographic, but reaching today’s teens requires an understanding of an entirely different online animal.
Social Networks are the newest way for teens to connect with their friends online, partake in online discussions, meet new people, even create their own blogs. Exchanging email and instant messages remains a popular pastime, to be sure, but increasingly it’s these online communities that are receiving the lion’s share of young peoples’ time. For marketers, these sites open up a whole new world of advertising opportunities. Designed around communication and effective at engaging consumers, social networks lend themselves well to such interactive initiatives as contests, quizzes, games, and branded content.