How to reach teens on Facebook

Teens are not leaving Facebook. Thank God, they are not leaving. Crisis averted.

I can’t even count how many times I´ve heard that Twitter is dying and “every one” seems to be leaving Facebook. But it´s not true, not true at all! New data coming out shows that teens are on Facebook. They use it regularly, but they use it differently than others on Facebook.

The Entrepreneur just published an article about Facebook and Millennials, and they presented a survey done the Pew Research Center. They found that 71 percent of teens use Facebook, making it the most popular social networking platform among 13- to 17-year-olds. Instagram is the second most popular (used by 52 percent), followed by Snapchat and Twitter.

So teens do use Facebook, but mostly for reading news and getting updates. They publish posts less frequently than adults. They want to know what’s going on, but they don´t feel a need to say what’s going on with them. Because they choose to be more private on Facebook. They mostly use groups on the platform to catch up with friends, share photos and news.

Now, over to my headline, how to reach teens on Facebook?

Quality trumps quantity any day. Posts valuable and fun information in a cool way. Be their friend, not a spammer. Show that you care for them on Facebook and that you respect how they use the platform. Don’t try to change their behaviour, but try to inspire them into doing something else on Facebook than they normally do. How to do that?

Engage them through content and through applications on your pages. Use instagram feeds, competitions, and christmas calendars. Only your imagination stops you here. One of your customers ShapeUp (a Norwegian magazine) are having a contest where their followers on Facebook can vote on who is going to be the ShapeUp-girl 2015. They made the application through our 24SevenSocial Platform, and it´s one amazing way to connect with teens and how to engage them and their friends.

Trough the Creator on 24SevenSocial you can make as many applications and in different varieties as you like to add onto your Facebook page. The possibilities are endless. If you´re thinking about making christmas calendars, I recommend you start talking to us soon. Quality takes time to perfect, and that’s what we like everything to be here at 24SevenSocial. Through these applications you can collect what we call gold, which is highly valuable in today’s market, and that is emails and phone numbers. Are you wondering why this is gold?

Through 24SevenSocial you can create target audiences on Facebook with emails or phone numbers. With this information we can target ads directly to people who already said they were interested in your business or product. And through these emails and phone numbers, you can also create look alike-audience. You can also target your ads to peoples interests on Facebook, this includes likes, activities and groups they are members of . One example is to if you´re a company that sells teen- fashion, you can target your ads to all teens by targeting to fashion- groups. You should also be member of different groups that are related to your target audience and their interests, then you can get a better overview on how teens use Facebook . I recommend making some groups of your own to invite the teens to discuss or to give you feedback.

Visualize everything. Make videos, period. We in 24SevenSocial follow our own advice, so we have our own 24SevenSocial show to visualize important information. In our first show we talk about how to catch people’s attention through video on Facebook. It´s important to remember why Vine got so popular, it’s comedy shows in 6 seconds. People want to be info-tained.

Be updated. Know who the teen celebrities are, it’s not just about Justin Bieber or One Direction. It´s all about the social media stars like Lele Pons (known from Vine), Jerome Jarre (known from Vine & Snapchat), Josh Paler Lin (known from Youtube) and the Norwegian fashion-blogger Lene Orvik. If you have the money, you should ask some social media star to star in some ads for you. But if you don´t that much money (I once heard that Jerome Jarre charges $20, 000 for doing one 6-second ad on Vine), reach out to bloggers that writes about the same interests that your brands have and your audience have. The point is to find a way to connect your brand to the popular culture that surrounds us and impact our behaviour, thoughts, feelings and dreams.

What to remember after reading this post:
Teens are not leaving Facebook, be their friend, target ads to their interests, engage them, use groups, visualize information and try to connect popular stuff with your brand.