This group has influence, money, and decision-making power. Indeed, its members are not just consumers; they are self-ordained experts who are accustomed to sharing their opinions and impressions of companies and products (both positive and negative) with the world!

They are known as the millennial consumer, or the digital native.

Who are digital natives?

Born between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s, digital natives have grown up during our current golden age of digital technology. Now in their mid-teens to mid-thirties, people in this generation came of age knowing how to interact with technology and are comfortable using it to their advantage.

Currently, digital natives represent almost a quarter of the total market and by 2017 it is projected that they will have more spending power than any other generation in America.

They are called digital natives because digital connectedness is in their DNA. Communicating through technology is a way of life for them, and they are, at all times, connected to their social networks through various devices.

Consumption habits of digital natives

The cool thing about digital natives is their ability to incorporate technology and social media to become more effective in business and client relationships.

Their content consumption habits differentiate them from more traditional consumers in that they are:

• Multi-platform consumers: Digital natives could be watching “American Idol” while simultaneously sharing that experience with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and even their texting buddies!
• Multi-device consumers: They consume content on different devices, such as their laptops, smartphones, and tablets.
• In charge of the conversation: They want to determine when and how content is delivered to them — interruption marketing is offensive to them.
• Disinterested in opinions of those outside their close social group, but are super-interested in what their friends think.
• Hyper-connected: Their stories and word-of-mouth messages travel faster than any news network. Their thoughts and experiences are shared in real-time through updates, tweets, pictures, and video.
• Very loyal to Facebook and will not be committing to Google+ anytime soon (here’s some evidence of this, straight from the horse’s mouth).
• Enthusiasts of marketing that is honest and authentic.
• Engaged: They don’t just consume content and information; they interact with it via digital expressions, such as updates, shares, re-tweets, etc.

How these habits influence content marketing

As you consider the habits of digital natives — their hyper-connectedness, their interaction with content and with one another — you begin to see that the social effect they have on consumerism is extremely powerful. So much so that brands are no longer defined by their own marketing messages but rather by the collective experiences of these young consumers.

When these experiences are shared online and offline, they become future guides for other consumers seeking input before making their own purchasing decisions.

So as brands try to figure out how to influence digital natives through content marketing, they must think about creating content that is engaging and share-worthy, and that enhances positive experiences amongst millennials.

How to influence digital natives through content marketing

First, understand that their habits regarding content consumption mean that you cannot entice digital natives with traditional mass marketing. Thus, you have to identify the best ways to deliver content through the six elements of engagement (defined in the Razorfish Liminal Report):

#1. Value

Above all else, digital consumers want to feel valued. They expect you to go out of your way to support their needs. This means that you have to create content that generates feelings of appreciation on their part. Examples:

• Create content that solves their problems and shows empathy to their concerns.
• Listen to conversations (e.g., on Twitter) that are not necessarily about your company and then respond to questions not directly aimed at you (e.g., Best Buy developed Twelpforce to answer people’s questions about electronic products in general).
• Listen and talk with customers on your blog or social networks, and make sure to add a personal touch that resonates with them (e.g., sign off Facebook updates with your first name (especially if you have several administrators on your page).
• Respond to questions (both online and offline) in such a way that they know you are working diligently on their behalf.

#2. Efficiency

Digital natives want quick and efficient service. Your brand should demonstrate that you value their time and energy. So create content that is easy and quick to access and that directly answers their questions. Examples:

• Create mobile-friendly content.
• Ensure fast download time of website content.
• Don’t “post and run” — respond quickly to blog comments, Facebook questions, and tweet chats.
• Eliminate cumbersome steps, processes, or requirements on your site that create user friction.
• Keep your content brief and to the point (try using infographics to capture short attention spans).

#3. Trust

Millennial consumers want to know that brands they do business with can be trusted. Credibility is established through honest, transparent, and authentic engagement. Examples:

• Drop the PR-speak or legalese from your organization’s content.
• If something goes wrong, apologize publicly on your social networks (particularly on YouTube).
• Don’t advertise; instead, deliver content that shows them “how-to” solutions to problems and ways to improve their lives or jobs.
• Remove yourself from the brand story as much as possible.
• Encourage their loyalty by giving away lots of free content without expecting anything in return.

#4. Consistency

Digital consumers do not want any unpleasant surprises. They will feel more secure if your branding, messaging, policies, and attitude remain consistent and reliable. Examples:

• Your brand message must remain consistent (remember what happened when GAP tried to change its logo?).
• Your content must deliver on any promises made.
• There should be no clash between policy and actions (e.g., if your Twitter profile says that you follow back everyone who follows you, be sure to do exactly that).

#5. Relevance

The digital consumer’s world is an “egosystem,” where everything revolves around himself or herself. They have empowered themselves through technology and their social graph. The only opinions that really matter are their own and those of their social network. So create content that is relevant to them. Examples:

• Digital natives love cool stories – share stories about interesting things that involve your staff, employees, and other customers.
• Use highly interactive content to encourage their participation (e.g., interactive white papers, flipped webinars etc.).
• Use highly targeted Facebook ads that show how their friends are connected with your brand.
• Offer them content that is customized to their needs and preferences.
• Do not waste their time with boring or generic messages.

#6. Control

If there’s one thing that digital consumers are deeply aware of (even if company executives and CEOs are not) it is that they are in control of the conversation and, ultimately, the relationship. Rather than fight it, brands can use this to their advantage by empowering customers to become brand advocates. Examples:

• Create platforms for user-generated content. 
• Ask customers to contribute content to your blog.
• Invite customers to tell you what kind of content they want (crowdsourcing).
• Create situations that give customers control while strengthening their emotional connection to your brand (e.g., Cisco Networking Academy normally invites select customers to become its Facebook Page administrators for periods of time).

Key takeaway

As technology changes, people change along with it. That might not always be good news for brands, but it’s something that they must accept and appreciate. The best way to truly accept this new digital culture and the business landscape that it has created is to observe, learn, understand, and then become involved with the digital native in order to create new opportunities for business and content marketing.

Over to you: How has the digital culture changed the way you do content marketing?

Cellphone photo image via Shutterstock

Unique considerations for healthcare content

There are a few issues unique to medical and healthcare information you need to consider when creating this type of content:

• Because doctors have many years of schooling and are recognized experts, many people have a natural tendency to believe whatever doctors tells them.  That belief extends to healthcare content on the Internet especially at sites of trusted professionals or organizations like doctor’s offices and health insurance companies. Therefore, it is critical that healthcare content, especially when it deals with diseases or medical conditions, be accurate and have transparent input and/or review by appropriate experts.
• Because people often seek healthcare content when under the stress of discovering that they or a loved one are suffering from a particular condition, it is important to treat healthcare and medical topics sensitively. Humor and a lighter tone are not unwelcome, but they should be limited to appropriate types of content or discussions.
• The availability of medical information online is rarely something that will cause a customer to choose a particular company or healthcare provider. However, the lack of health and medical information may influence an existing customer’s decision to change affiliations.

So what can marketers in the healthcare field do? Here are four examples of companies in healthcare or related fields that make content available to their customers to highlight their value. For the most part, these companies do a good job of providing access to a large amount of information.

WebMD

Designed as a web-based informational service to provide useful content to consumers, WebMD provides content such as news, articles, community forums, and interactive research tools. If  the site suffers any challenges, they are likely due to its comprehensive coverage of medical issues.

Content description: Content on WebMD is created by medical doctors and other medical professionals. To help the reader easily decide how trustworthy and relevant each article is, each article contains:

• Link to sources
• The date of publication
• The name of the doctor who reviewed the article
• The date of that review.

In addition, articles and tools make good use of graphics, photographs, and videos, when applicable.

User experience: Users have several ways to find any one piece of information, giving them choices for accessing content in ways that will be most comfortable for them.

• Powerful search function: Each page includes a top navigation bar with drop-down menus of subtopics. The left navigation bar is contextual — it changes based on what page a user is reading.
• Comprehensive topic browsing: To find information on a specific condition or disease, users can search a Health A-Z section, which lists topics alphabetically. A little bit like a site map, visitors can browse the entire list or narrow down their search by topic or format — Drugs A-Z, Living Better A-Z, Slideshows A-Z, etc.

Available content: Users can access a tremendous amount of content without registering. Users who do register receive access to special communities, a subscription to newsletters, and the print WebMD magazine, as well as access to tools for tracking health considerations like weight loss and vaccinations.

There is even a Games A-Z section, featuring games that actually teach a little bit about health topics like overactive bladder (“Beat the Urge”, which you’ll enjoy if you play “Go”).

Format/Layout: The overall format is clean and, though packed with a lot of information in each of the three columns, it is essentially uncluttered. The center section of the home page is reserved for news, features, and links to the WebMD community and blogs on medical and health-related topics.

Social media: Other than the blogs on its sites, and the articles it syndicates throughout its large network of publishing partners, WebMD’s social media presence consists of accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately, the site only links to these through tiny icons at the bottom of its pages. These links are available from any page on the site, but a user might have to scan a while before noticing them. Moreover, when following these links, WebMD puts up a screen noting that the privacy policies on non-WebMD sites are different than their privacy policy. The reminder is useful, but the methodology —opening up two additional windows, one for the site and one for the note — is a bit awkward.

Facebook: 88,523 followers
Twitter: 298,582 followers

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society

The National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society’s website is designed to provide access to critical information on this disease for two distinct audiences: Consumers and professionals in the field. The foundation does a good job of making the division clear, and consumer information is written in suitably clear, easy-to-understand language.

Content description: News coverage is offered on topics such as clinical trials, legislation, and the society itself, and the site also offers information on issues such as what MS is, how to live with the disease, and how to talk to children who may suffer from or be affected by it.

In addition, the site features a multimedia library that is a useful repository of MS-related online magazines and newsletters (including Keep S’myelin, a newsletter for children), online videos, and other web resources.

Available content: The PDF articles users can download include short author biographies. However, most of the online content does not have author or source information, publication dates, or information about peer reviews.

User experience: The content on the site can be easily shared. For instance:

• Each page has buttons to enable users to share the page on email or via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious.
• Buttons allow registered users to bookmark content for future reference under My Content.

As far as navigation is concerned, the MS Society site could be more intuitive. There are two top navigation bars, including one at the very top that uses a small typeface. Presumably, this top level navigation bar is for information that is typically accessed less often. And the lower of the two top navigation bars provides the primary information that brings users to the site. Though all of the topics on both top navigation bars seem important.

Social media: The society has a robust social media following, and the site’s Online Community page provides links to just what you’d expect — social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but also to LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and Second Life (from the Virtual Worlds link). The existence of a link to the Society’s MySpace page, which does not appear to have been updated in several months, is the only chink in the content/social media armor.

Facebook: 117,957 followers
Twitter: 10,674 followers
YouTube: 103,553 channel views

United Healthcare

As a health insurance company, United Healthcare provides health coverage for millions of Americans. It also provides plenty of health and wellness content on its website, though it can be easy to get lost in the maze of what it offers.

User experience: From the home page, users can link to Health Care Resources, which opens a screen with five links:

• Be a Smart Patient
• Source4Women
• Medicare Made Clear
• Grow Healthy
• United for Reform

Notably, three of these pages take you to separate URLs, with site designs that do not match that of the primary site and navigation structure. This lack of consistency in look, feel, and functionality could confuse  or alienate the audience. “Be a Smart Patient,” for example, takes users to Mychoicenotchance.com,  which contains content like smart patient checklists and a preventative care tool, doesn’t have a clear navigation path back to the site. Users can also follow a link to search for a doctor, but this takes them to a different page (with a different interface) than if they selected “Find a Doctor” on the home page.

The resource sections, “Source4Women” and “United for Reform,” link to pages on the primary website of United Healthcare, using a top navigation bar that has a link to Health & Wellness. That link takes users to sections like “Getting Healthy, Staying Healthy” and “Tools & Calculators”. However, it appears that a lot of the content connected to these categories is behind a firewall and can only be accessed by United Healthcare patients.

Content description/Available content: Source4Women seems to have the most robust content on the site in terms of amount and scope. It includes recipes, health tips, and links to caregiver support resources, among other topics. This section seems to be where most of the health and wellness content is located; however, the section title might alienate the male audience and keep them from searching here, even though they can certainly benefit from the information and resources found here.

Social media: Source4Women has a small Twitter presence (87 followers) and a community section, where users can find its expert blogs. United Healthcare itself does not appear to have a social media presence — no blogs, no identifiable Twitter handle, and no identifiable Facebook presence.

Walgreens

Serving as the online presence for major drugstore chain, Walgreens.com, is a multi-function e-commerce website. But customers and patients seeking more in-depth information can find it through a link (albeit in a very tiny font) to a healthcare portal on the center top of each page.

Content description/Available content: The Health Information home page acts as the table of contents and index for resources, publications, and interactive tools. Some of the content available on the site includes:

• “Health Topics” and “The Health Encyclopedia” enable users to drill down to particular topic they are interested in.
• “The Body Guide” provides an interactive directory to the human body, helping users learn about major body parts and systems.
• “Care Guides” provide step-by-step guidance for managing certain health conditions.

Content on Walgreens.com is created by medical doctors and other medical professionals. Articles contain authors or source references, the name of the doctor who reviewed the article, and the date of that review.

User experience: Navigation is a bit jumbled on the site, and it can be confusing when searching for certain information. For example, there are dedicated links to Drug Information, a Pharmacist FAQ, and a Check Drug Interactions tool; however, these take users to the pharmacy site — where the Health Information navigation gets lost — which can leave a user confused as to how to return to the site. “Health Corner TV” and “Health Newsletters” links also take users to pages that are lacking the Walgreens site’s left navigation bar (Health Corner TV is a different URL).

Social media: Shockingly, there are no direct links to Walgreens’ social media presence on the website’s home page or health information section, even though the company has a Facebook account with a large number of followers.

The company has several Twitter accounts with between 1,000 and 54,000 followers on each, but it is not clear which is the corporate site or which may be individual Walgreen’s stores that have their own social presences. The company also has a YouTube channel with over 6,000 channel views, but users need to go directly through YouTube to find it. Links to these pages from the website would be useful in ensuring users are accessing the proper sites.

Facebook: 1,327,929

Do you agree that this healthcare content is generally in good shape? Do you see the need for a cure? What sites do you think are the picture of healthy content?

IT buying decisions usually involve a lengthy process divided into at least two steps, whereby IT vendors must convince their target audience that first, they have a need for the technology being discussed, and second, that their product is the solution to provide that technology. So when developing content for an IT audience, it’s helpful to assign early-stage content to the first step and late-stage content to the second step.

For our purposes, let’s focus on early-stage content, which must quickly get the audience up to speed on the general technology area and how it might affect their particular corporate environment. Here are four tips for developing early-stage IT content that will help you identify prospects and drive their interest in following your brand as they move on to step two:

Reveal common problems that have given rise to the technology in question

IT professionals don’t want their lives to be excessively complicated for no good reason. So when a new technology comes along, it’s doubtful that an IT person will jump to embrace it just to be an early adopter. Emerging technologies generally catch on because they solve specific problems or improve certain business drivers. By creating content that addresses what these specific problems and business drivers are and how your product addresses them, you will increase your chance of connecting with your target audience.

Determine how someone might articulate the problem that your product solves and include that in the title of your content. For example, if you produce security software that protects against data loss by securing Internet browsers, (problem = “data loss” and “unsecure browsers”), then an article title like Understanding Data Loss and the Threat of Unsecure Browsers would do the trick. If you produce virtualization software for storage servers (problem = “storage efficiency” and “storage management”), then you will find your audience with an article title like Improving Storage Management and Efficiency with Virtualization.

Communicate details of the technology, but don’t get too technical

Face it. When it comes to technology literature, a James Patterson page-turner it is not. Explaining how technology works can easily launch your audience over the cliff into the “glazed over” abyss. Even the techie-est of techies has a low capacity for hardcore tech speak when first learning about a new technology. Thus, early dives into educating your audience can assume an expert-level technical tone so as to reinforce your company’s subject matter expertise, but keep the jargon to a minimum so that the executive and the technical audience can both follow along with you.

Make comparisons and contrasts to similar, more familiar technologies

A single technology can affect many different realms of the IT environment. For example, when IT pros use the term “virtualization,” they could be talking about server virtualization, storage virtualization, desktop virtualization, or something else entirely. When new technologies emerge, the differences among each sect of the technology can be confusing even for the pros. But if your content defines and differentiates discrete areas of an emerging technology, IT professionals will likely snap up your information in a heartbeat. An article titled Storage, Server, or Desktop Virtualization: How Each Will Affect Your IT Environment would help vendors of any of these three virtualization solutions identify potential prospects.

Save the product advice for later

Offering specific product information to IT consumers too early in their purchase cycle will only fall on deaf ears. It may also  result in a missed opportunity to build a connection with them down the line. But by saving the product information for later and focusing on the technology at hand, you will accelerate your salesperson’s sales cycle by a few steps and create a sense of goodwill with your audience because you didn’t immediately hit them with a sales pitch.

Often, the first step in this two-step process demands a tremendous amount of audience education. And in the end, vendors will spend lots of time talking about technology and perhaps not as much time talking about their particular solution. But there is no bypassing this first step, and smart IT vendors will view it as an opportunity to identify legitimate prospects and advance them toward the product evaluation stage of their buying cycle.

Include an introductory letter

Whether it’s a magazine redesign or a website launch like this one, introductory letters offer a glimpse of the strategy and aspirations behind new content offerings. In this case, the welcome note that BCG CEO Hans-Paul Bürkner posted on the blog reveals a strategy that reflects content marketing best practices and offers some content innovations in the consulting space.

Reflecting on the daily inspiration that the firm reportedly receives from its clients, Bürkner pledges that the website will be updated at least weekly, and probably more often. That frequency is essential for search engine optimization, of course. But it’s also essential for a firm like BCG with such broad topic expertise and a global consulting footprint to continually offer new, high-quality insights.

Break your website into topics

To help keep the content flowing, BCG has a range of featured topics to write about. For example, to cover the leadership transformation topic, BCG distilled the best practices from interviews with 11 CEO clients and offered the edited videos so visitors could watch what the clients had to say. Other content includes summaries of past articles by BCG authors that have appeared in key management journals like the Harvard Business Review. In addition, the inclusion of interactive graphics offers some nice eye candy and makes it possible to drill down for a deeper understanding of the relevant data.

Market insights, such as what the company provides for the red-hot tablet computer market, are even being released here before all of the survey data is compiled. That makes perfect sense in such a rapidly evolving market where the price:screen size overview reflected in the chart below shows two distinct target markets, which could quickly be outmoded by retail discounting and the next round of product releases.

Source: BCG Consulting Group.

Don’t be afraid to “go retro”

Some of the most innovative content, which does a great job of reinforcing BCG’s position as an in-it-for-the-long-haul strategy firm, are “classic” articles going back to the 1960s. These reprints — some of which are also available as mp3 recordings — feature BCG founder Bruce Henderson and other well-known BCG thought leaders. What’s striking about these articles, such as Why Change Is So Difficult, is how timely and on target they remain more than 40 years later. (Too bad every company doesn’t have decades of relevant content to dust off and repurpose.)

Include small touches

BCG also has a lot of little features that make it easy for users to consume and share content:

• Users can easily share articles via e-mail or the social media portal of their choice.
• Easy text enlargement makes sense for their target demographic.
• By registering and logging in, users can easily save key articles and be alerted when new content is posted on targeted topics.

Don’t overlook your logo

While BCG does a lot of things well, there are things that can be improved. One problem with the site is the confusing dot in the logo after “bcg,” which is highlighted in the welcome letter headline and some other references. But the dot is not in the actual URL, bcgperspectives.com, nor is it in all references to the site. Why make the name of the thought leadership outlet all lowercase without spacing if the name doesn’t reflect the actual URL? There isn’t even a redirect if someone types in the name as it actually appears in the logo.

Thought leadership best practices

Overall though, the site is an impressive repackaging of current insights, archives, and classic thought leadership. It will be interesting to watch if Boston Consulting Group can continue to execute the strategy that they’ve laid out.

In summary, here are some key points content marketers should remember:

• Match content frequency to market requirements and expectations
• Offer content in multiple formats (text, video, audio)
• Deepen your insights by presenting multiple perspectives on a common theme
• Use interactive graphics to serve up data based on reader interests
• Publish time-sensitive insights as quickly as possible
• Mine your decades-old archives for content that remains relevant
• Avoid inconsistent branding elements

Last year, for the first time, PwC began to offer the survey in multiple formats, including customized reports by industry and geography, as well as multimedia versions of specific sections.

Marketers can learn a lot from how PwC manages to use this single research activity to produce dozens of sub-reports, multi-media presentations and events. They have perfected the art of content multiplication.

How PwC repackages its survey content

Let’s take this year’s 13^th annual report as an example. From the survey of 1,198 company leaders and government officials from over 50 countries, PwC managed to publish nearly three-dozen reports/formats, including:

• An in-depth, 52-page main report, including charts and analysis.
• Sub-reports by industry and region (19 in all).
• Key issue data sets. For example, if your focus is regulatory reform, you can pull survey data based on that single issue.
• Video interviews of six global CEOs—speaking out on some of the biggest findings of the report.
• Video interview of PwC’s CEO, Dennis Nally.
• Transcripts of full CEO interviews.
• Various other customized reports, such as “Government and the Global CEO” and a data-rich report for quant-jocks.

I believe that many organizations invest serious time and money into thought leadership research and reports, only to have those reports languish after they have been sped out to market. PwC’s survey is a flagship piece of thought leadership not only because it touches on issues that people are hungry to read about, but also because PwC has figured out how to customize their report for their diverse audience and push out content in dozens of formats. In this way, the survey can be a broad-based view of CEOs’ views of the economy and business, or a highly customized report about the auto industry in the current climate.

How PwC uses a microsite for its survey

Also worth a peek is the PwC Global CEO Survey microsite, which houses all the various report iterations and serves as a springboard to other areas of the PwC site. From the microsite landing page, viewers can navigate to those areas of the survey they are most interested in, and have access to video formats for bite-sized servings of analysis.

You’ll note that PwC does not assume you will want to read the full 52-page report. The download page allows you to choose those sections that you may find interesting–another simple but beautiful idea from the content marketers at PwC (and something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before…why didn’t anyone else think of this?).

Do you agree that the PwC model pays higher dividends or is this strategy overkill? Do you aim to create multiple formats from a single thought leadership report? What other examples can you point us to?