The Life and Times of a Gen Z

I have a confession to make. It’s something I’ve struggled to admit even to myself but here it is. I am, technically, Gen Z.

Now, I’m an old Gen Z – I only missed being a millennial by a year – but still a Gen Zer.

So, what has my experience as a Gen Zer been? In two words: social media.

Social media has always been a huge part of my life. One of my earliest memories was going over to my best friend’s house and hopping on her Myspace account, then switching over to an early form of YouTube to watch my very first music video (The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars if you were curious). I got my first social media account at 11 when my mother finally allowed me to lie about my age, saying I was actually 13, which is still the minimum age, and create a Facebook profile. By the time I was 14 I was rocking Instagram and Snapchat, back when Instagram had its original logo and Snapchat forced you to send a video or pic for 10 seconds or less. And now? Well, I still spend most of my free time watching YouTube and scrolling Instagram.

I, like many others in my generation and the generation above me, was born with a phone in my hand. Social media has been such a huge part of my life and my early experiences that I struggle to imagine what my life would have been like without it. I know social media. I know what works and what I like, because I’ve been curating my taste in content since I was 7. I’ve watched the landscape of social media shift and change and land on what it is today.

United Ways need to realize that they are competing in a landscape where your donors have expectations on what they see and how they see it when it comes to their social media feeds. Simply posting some text on a Facebook page will no longer work. Because here’s something you may not have realized yet. The Red Cross isn’t your social media competition. The Humane Society isn’t your social media competition. Not even the Salvation Army is your social media competition for views and likes.

Your competition is Kim Kardashian. Your competition is Gigi Hadid. Your competition is Harry Styles. Hollywood stars with millions of followers and gorgeous feeds that show them in exotic places doing outrageously fun things. You need to get donors to stop scrolling in a world of beach pictures and fashion shows.

It’s possible, but it isn’t “easy.” Social media requires thought. It requires knowing how the platform works and what users expect to see. You need to go in with a strategy. You need to know what you want to say and say it quickly because you only have a couple of seconds to convince someone to pay attention to you.

In our upcoming webinar Creating Social Media that Rises Above the Rest, I’m going to review the three main social media platforms your United Way should be using, show you examples of United Ways who are doing it right, and give you the tips and tricks you will need to create social media accounts that your donors want to follow.

Social media is hard. It changes constantly and even I sometimes feel left behind. Currently, I’m trying to figure out how Tik Tok works. My little sisters still haven’t completely explained it to me. All I know is that social media is here to stay, so we better get good at it.

Join us on August 11 at 2 p.m. ET for this 60-minute webinar.