Millennials and Information

I read a report put out by Edelman group that stated that "according to a recent Kaiser Foundation study, teens today grow up spending 7.5 hours per day creating and consuming media and, according to Mintel, that average jumps to more than 13 hours per day for 25-30 year olds." The report goes on to say that "75% of global Millennials in our study said that they are never disconnected for more than an hour a day and one in seven Indian Millennials said that at no point are they disconnected during the course of their day."

What does this mean for PR?

• Because of the Millennial attachment to various forms of media, news of a crisis spreads quickly, and PR professionals must be able to respond to a crisis as quickly as possible to combat the effects of the crisis on on the situation.
• The report also states that Millennials "use four or more sources of information to make their final purchase decision on everything from clothes, to electronics, to grooming products." This means that public relations [and advertising] is more important than ever to build relationships with people. 
• Social media is becoming increasing more popular for Millennials to use as a form of customer service, with one in five Millenials turning to social networks for support. This means that companies should monitor their social networks and interact with their followers to maintain good customer service. 

A copy of the report can be found here.

I have thought a lot about Millennial media consumption lately, due to the release of the Baylor Lariat's special tab on Generation Y. (which can be found here). We have been pegged with words such as lazy, privileged and unprepared, but our commitment to social media shows we want to be constantly up to date with the latest information (and technology.)

Though I don't use myself as an example because I am likely consume more media than the average Millennial due to my editor position on the Baylor Lariat, I am still glad to see my friends occasionally post news articles and discuss events that are important to them on Facebook and Twitter. Since some claim that print is dead, I am glad that our generation is still consuming media on a daily basis. 

Public Relations and the Newsroom: The Divide

As a city editor at the Baylor Lariat, I am in charge of going through all of the press releases we receive daily. Almost every day, I receive a message from someone asking me why I didn't run their press release. Most of the time, the answer to the question is relevance. I release press releases from companies that have NOTHING to do with Baylor, who want us to write an article about them even though our readers wouldn't be interested.

The other big reason is whether the press release is newsworthy. I get press releases all the time about events that occur all the time and don't have any interesting news elements to them.

As a public relations major who works at a newspaper, I spend more time going through press releases than other people might. Here are a few tips I have thought of while reading other press releases that might be useful to you if you would like to pitch something to the newspaper.

1) Make it short--just include the main information. That way people can read it quickly and call you for more interviews.
2) Just like in a news story, put the most interesting information at the top. If you put the newsworthy elements at top, we are more likely to use it.
3) Don't include a lot of quotes- It's just easier to get basic information in the press release and then contact people for quotes. We almost never use quotes we get in press releases so just a few quotes works well.

Those are just a few things I noticed while reading press releases. Hope this helps!