Millennials are currently the lionshare of the workforce, with 59 million workers in the US alone. In just five years, they are projected to make up 75% of the workforce, according to Pew Research. What this means to you as a presenter is that there will most likely be a lot of people born between 1981 and 1996 in your audience. While it’s always good to do your research on any kind of audience, here are some tips and tricks to gaining the trust of millennial audiences in particular.
Plan and Prepare
As presenters, we lean heavily on trust to get through to the crowd. However, this is getting increasingly harder. While millennial audiences are generally loving, supportive, and open–they are slow to trust. Even among colleagues and peers, where boomers freely give their trust 37% of the time, Generation X gives it 31%. And millennials? Only 19% of them trust freely. Now, this is no need for panic. In fact, it’s definitely a best practice to assume no one will trust you freely. Do your homework, plan, and prepare to turn hearts and change minds with your next presentation.
Work Smarter and Harder
This is a challenge we can all rise to. The themes that really speak to the millennial generation are teamwork and heroism. So, when thinking about your messaging, try to make sure it is purposeful. Does your slide deck highlight how this item or idea will benefit the general public? If not, how can you weave that into your narrative? A great way we like to see this done is by highlighting the “so what” factor. Millennial audiences have actually been conditioned to listen for this–so this is no time to save the best for last. Try to mention your “why” as early in your talk as possible.
Be Social
It should come as no surprise that members of millennial audiences are highly likely to Google their presenter. Being a thought leader comes with a territory, and part of that territory must be your online presence. As a modern-day presenter, when you want to really make an impact, you must “wow” them before they even arrive. This means having a robust online brand on multiple platforms. Decide which will suit you best: Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc, and start interacting with people!
While there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all remedy to this current trust gap, acknowledging it exists is a really great first step. Millennial audiences are surrounded by AI and fake news, they just want to hear from a real person telling them reliable information. Be honest with them, be honest with yourself, and give them something to “write home” about. Or, well, more likely to tweet about. Ethos3’s approach to content is to engage, empathize and energize every audience. Let us know how we can help by requesting a free quote today!
