Sitting in a Camden café on route to day 2 of the @ATCMUK town centres’ #summerschool19, seems a great place to reflect on lessons learnt about engaging the #futureconsumer.
lesson 1: Consumers, creators & citizens
Great to hear this broader focus from the outset including first presentation from Kids Insights. Anything else and we haven’t learnt the lessons from the soulless centres that current generations are turning away from.
lesson 2: Focus on people not platforms
Understand your ‘communities’ and how you want to engage them. Use social media insights to listen to this community and monitor your reach and impacts. It’s a continuous learning cycle. This inspiring “You Can’t” video shows how influencers instinctively connect with their audience to show what they can do!
lesson 3: Know your Generation Z from your Millennials
“Gen Z” is the newest generation to be named and were born between 1995 and 2006. They are currently between 13-24 years old and Generation Z present a different prospect to Millennials born between 1980 and 1994. Think words like authenticity and simplicity.
lesson 4: Engage across ages
As a mother and son’s video story of turning around a business and a town in Missouri shows, a good story and story-teller will reach-out and connect across ages. The perennials of Generation X -and even Baby Boomers- do digital too!
lesson 5: Curate creators’ content
There is already a wealth of content about your town created by businesses, customers, bloggers and photographers. Use their insights into your shared communities for mutual promotion. Imagine a mosaic of the best social media feeds for your town!
lesson 6: Co-produce with citizens
People care about places. More effective communication provides an opportunity to engage communities in determining, designing and developing locally-led solutions. The people at Camden Town Unlimited are great at this.
lesson 7: Think experiences
Whether as consumers, creators or citizens, people are connected through the sentiments of how they experience a place. That might be through food, festivals, culture or customer service. Improving experiences is as much a part of revitalization as infrastructural investment.
lesson 8: Inform; educate; entertain.
YouTube guidance is that the most engaging social media content will deliver in at least two aspects of inform, educate; or entertain. This seems a good mantra for using all media.
lesson 9: Twitter, Instagram or Facebook
Choosing between the big three social media sites should still be your first port of call. If you are a B2B business, pick Twitter. If you are a fun, casual, or cool B2C business pick Instagram. If you are a mass brand, stick to Facebook.
lesson 10: Investigate influencers
This is my note to self to understand how influencers with millions of followers can help share experiences of place. I now know more about the potential of influencers as “someone who changes the way that other people behave“, usually through social media. This Vagabrothers’ vlog about Dublin for example, delivers the mantra of inform, educate and entertain for me!
More information
Read about using digital technology and data as part of the LGA’s on-line toolkit for town centre revitalisation
Download a copy of the revitalising town centres handbook
