Tips for Engaging Millennials

I found this Soundcloud presentation of a Journalismnews narrowcast the other day and though the key points weren't specifically about student journalism, I thought the producers made some great points about 18-30 year olds and their media preferences.

The highlights for student journos:
• YouTube is an important gateway to other content, and YouTube analytics -- what gets audience attention -- should be used as a guide to content creation.
• Millennials will follow a YouTube trail to an originating website.
• Attention spans are short in the contemporary news cycle, so stories created as a reaction to other events have to be posted in hours, not days. The shelf-life of a story vastly shorter than it used to be.
• The audience wants to co-create content, and news organizations need to find ways to make that happen.
• Millennials have a fear of missing out (FOMO), so they're interested in event coverage that involves them and their peers. Stories should include coverage of the audience, and the audience will promote those stories with hashtags identifying themselves and their friends, driving traffic.
• Millennials are interested in local news because they think of themselves as good citizens and good neighbors. They recognize that local events affect their families.
• Successful news organizations pay attention to analytics so they can stay on top of what millennials want to see, hear and read.