Ep. 09: How to work smarter—getting schooled by the Class of 2020.
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I’m going to start by telling you something so cute. My mom texted me the other day and said she loves my podcast. So I’m taking to her, and I’m asking her, “where are you listening to the podcast?”
“Well,” she says, “I was outside for a while, and then I went upstairs. We actually tried to listen in bed for a while, but fell asleep. So I ended up finishing it while I was in the kitchen today.”
I laughed. I was asking what platform she was listening on—like Spotify, Stitcher, or Apple. It goes to show that perspective can really change things.
I laugh, but then I look at myself. I’m 36, proud of that because I’m sort of straddling the tech-savvy side of the world and the old school way of thinking which is that I don’t want too much technology in my life—I still want time to be bored. That’s always when I’ve come up with my best creative ideas.
But when I’m spending time with the younger generations—I often feel like they’re talking over me with the ways they use technology—like apps and social media—to communicate and make their lives more efficient.
This episode is about how to make marketing more efficient by using technology—and I’m tapping into who else—the Class of 2020. This isn’t just about technology though, it’s also about what we can learn from their mindset.
Today we’ll talk through:
The simple tricks, apps, and software the Class of 2020 use to complete their work in top speed and with amazing accuracy. I bet you’ve used these apps before, but I’m guessing like me, it’s never occurred to you to use them in the ways I’m about to share.
Second, we’ll focus specifically on social media and content creation…and why getting on the social media bandwagon might be the best way to get in front of the younger set.
Next, we’ll explore the “beginner’s mind”—after all, it’s human nature to be curious, but for many adults, it’s easier to stay in our lane than to think outside of the box.
Finally, we’ll talk about resilience. The Class of 2020 doesn’t get to go to senior prom, walk across a stage. Many of their summer plans have been cancelled, and whether or not they’ll start their first semester in a college dorm or from the bedroom they grew up, is all still in question. So yes, we’re going to touch on this, too.
Although the Class of 2020 is facing so many challenges, they’re growing thicker skin, they’re learning to adapt, they’re getting schooled on the real world, and they’re going to be the future change-makers of the world.
So let’s jump in.
Simple tricks, apps, and software.
The first student we’re going to learn from today is Victoria. She’s a recent graduate here in Bend, Oregon. Victoria had her pick of colleges, she was accepted into every school she applied to, and I’m pretty sure that number was over a dozen.
The tip that Victoria shared to make writing more efficient knocked me off my feet. Victoria swears by voice-to-text. She doesn’t just swear by it, she completes all of her writing assignments using it. She uses voice-to-text to write 10 page papers. She used it to write all of her college essays.
Here’s how it works: whenever Victoria’s given a writing prompt, she opens up Google Docs on her phone, and stars getting her ideas down using the voice-to-text function, aka that little microphone in the bottom right corner of your keyboard.
Then, when she’s in front of her computer at home, all that’s really left is to organize and edit. Just like that, Victoria’s accomplished in under an hour, what would take most of us several hours, if not days, to complete.
Now I’ve definitely used voice to text before, but for some reason, I thought it was only for texting. Maybe you thought the same thing. I mean who knew? Well, Victoria knew. And now I’m catching on. You can see how voice to text can speed up your process and get words on the page at rapid speed.
I was so floored by this trick that I thought I’d share it with my nieces, Ruby and Naomi, they’re 18 year old twins. Like Victoria, they’re about to graduate high school virtually. So I started telling them about voice-to-text, and they nodded.
“Oh yeah,” Ruby told me, “We use voice-to-text, there’s all kinds of apps that speed things up.”
Between the two of them, they went on to list a bunch of apps I’d never heard of, and many processes that I thought were still manual.
Naomi told me about an app where you can take a picture of a math problem with your phone, and it will split out the answer. It’s called Photomath. There’s another one that spits out citations with proper formatting. And they’ve been submitting their work through Google Classroom since before school got cancelled, which automatically checks for plagarism. These were great, but I wasn’t sure how I’d use any of these in marketing, so I pushed for more.
There’s a plug-in called Grammarly, Ruby told me, that will not only check my grammar, but would also rank my work as “professional, academic, or casual.”
Ok, this was one we as marketers could use. There’s definitely something to Grammarly, especially for marketers who don’t feel confident in their writing abilities or style. This plug-in can help.
If writing comes naturally, I suggest trusting your instincts, especially if you’re writing more persuasively than academically. Your writing should sound natural. When it comes to writing good copy, easy to read beats out perfect grammar. Hop over to episode 3 for more on this topic.
There was one more thing my nieces mentioned that jumped out at me. Remember English lit, and all of the books we had to read over the summer and throughout the school year? The “reading lists” we remember from our high school days might as well be renamed “listening lists”—the Class of 2020 uses apps like Audible to “read books” without every having to turn a page.
Imagine if you grew up listening to the classics instead of reading them? I love libraries, I love my physical books, but there is something about listening that helps us absorb the information, and with a good storyteller or narrator, the stories might even stay with us longer.
This got me thinking about the way I communicate, and I think there’s so much power in audio. Think about it. You may be multitasking, but you’re absorbing words you listen to in a way that’s different than when it’s read on the page. You hear the voices tone, inflection and emphasis. The question is: How can we work audio into more of what we’re doing? Maybe it’s internal voice memos that get the point across faster, or maybe it’s audio or video testimonials from past guests posted on social and across your website, instead of only written word.
Social media and content creation.
I’d totally be missing the mark if I didn’t mention social media, and the way it’s being used by the Class of 2020, and the millennials that came before them. Getting your social media mix right is so important, as it can help you get in front of future guests in a more organic way than traditional digital marketing.
Whereas the older generations (and yes, I’m referring to myself) still run to Tripadvisor to read reviews and compare hotels, the younger set is finding travel inspiration without every having to leave their favorite social media site. They’re watching as friends and people they admire, share travel photos, hotel tours, and Insta-worthy moments. There’s a funny thing that happens, that you may have heard of—FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is especially common in the younger set. The feeling that they’re missing out on what their friends and people they admire are doing, wearing, and saying, online. Around 70% of users experience FOMO. Of course, brands are going to capitalize on this, putting their products in the hands of users with high visibility (also known as influencers) as a marketing effort in its own right.
While many hotels and most restaurants don’t have budget dedicated to influencer marketing just yet, there’s a crop of micro-influencers, with small, highly engaged audiences, who are willing to work on trade agreements because they see the campaign as mutually beneficial.
When it comes to choosing a hotel or a destination, 80% of travelers trust their peer group over experts. Think of influencers as the most popular kids in school—the clothes they wear, the places they go, the way they speak—influences the rest of the school. It’s the same idea on social media, you want to align yourself with people with real influence over your audience.
You won’t typically see a high school senior reading a guide book, but you will definitely see them scrolling their social feeds, watching YouTube videos, and practicing dance moves for TikTok. You might be thinking, “my customers aren’t on TikTok,” but that’s exactly what hotels said when Instagram started 10 years ago, and look at it now. It’s not surprising that high schoolers are the early adopters.
Right now, there aren’t many businesses on the app of 800 million users, and there isn’t that much content for all of those users either. Which means unlike Facebook and Instagram, the content you post has a longer shelf life. Now could be the time to figure out TikTok, and get in while the getting’s good.
As you think about your marketing strategy, hone in on your social strategy and attach some real goals to it. A lot of my strategies include influencer and brand partnerships to grow your audience, consistent posting to show up for your followers, and opt-in offers that are strong enough to convince a user to get off the app and actually subscribe to your email list.
Just remember that 80% of travelers do not book with the first brand that’s top of mind, most are “influenced” by what they’re seeing online. Social media might be a fast track to making your marketing more efficient by meeting your future guests where they’re already hanging out online.
Blind faith.
The next thing we can learn from The Class of 2020 is blind faith.
We all know the stereotype, that teenagers think they know everything and lack a lot of life experience. But when did believing in yourself become a bad thing?
The Class of 2020 is uniquely situated to walk into this world with blind faith and a healthy dose of reality—at a very young, but critical age. Senior prom’s been cancelled, and graduating seniors have just found out that graduation’s cancelled too. What happens when everything you’re looking forward to, crumbles? And you’re essentially told being in the classroom—the very thing you’ve been doing for the last 18 years—is non-essential? It’s been a struggle for all of us, and none of us—except for the survivors of Spanish Flu a century ago—have dealt with a global pandemic before.
But I see the Class of 2020 rising to the top, I see them getting outside to watch the sunset, I see their optimism. I see them cooking, shaking their hips on TikTok. I see them hopeful and planning for their future. Right now, instead of binge watching Netflix, many seniors are finding ways to help their fellow classmates, and the world. Some high schoolers have spent their time away from school printing masks and face shields on their 3D printers. Others were volunteering at shelters, or caring for their younger siblings so their parents could continue to work through these hard times. They’ve also adopted online learning like the pros we already knew they were when it comes to technology.
Let’s go back to this idea of blind faith, and why it’s a good thing. There’s a certain confidence about seniors, have you noticed? Maybe it’s because its their year, they’re at the top of their class. They have swagger. If you’re not living under a rock, you’ve noticed all the dancing happening on social media, and their willingness to be in front of the camera.
It’s something we can learn from them. The rest of us in our 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond—we go at life with a little more cynicism. We’ve been “in the real world,” climbing metaphorical ladders, and maybe real ones too, we know how life is tough. We survey the scene, we compare ourselves to our neighbors, we look around at what already exists before we put our own ideas out into the world. Many of us are not the first to raise our hand, in fear that our question or answer might be wrong, or our idea’s already been taken.
But if we put ourselves in the Class of 2020s’ mindset, we can have more faith in ourselves. Maybe it’s not blind, but it’s no longer limiting. The path becomes unobstructed. Kind of like the Class of 2020, who is now entering the world with the unbreakable confidence of a young adult, and life experience to back it up.
I think back to my early 20s, when I still had that limitless mindset myself. I had no idea how hard it would be to get a book published. So after the manuscript was complete, I knew it wasn’t going to sit on a shelf and collect dust (and yes, back then it was a printed manuscript). I pitch my story to the execs of United Talent Agency while catering a party at one of their houses. If I'd known who I was dealing, I would’ve been intimidated. I probably wouldn’t have mentioned my book at all, and I would’ve missed out on an opportunity that changed my life. I’m so glad I was limitless back then, because guess what happened? They loved my pitch. They asked me to show up at their office on Monday morning with a copy of my manuscript. Fast forward a few months and I had a literary agent, and a few months after that, I had a book deal.
So again, just imagine if we could harness that confidence in ourselves along with our real world experience—how much more we could accomplish if we believed less in our own limits, and more in possibilities.
The beginner’s mind.
The next thing I have learned from the Class of 2020 is to adopt a beginner’s mind. I’m amazed at how today’s seniors are active on Twitter, sharing stories about their own politics, informing themselves through podcasts, and just plain hungry for knowledge outside of the classroom.
As adults, we tend to say in our lanes. I’ll admit I listen to mostly marketing and business podcasts, whereas when I was going through IVF treatments to have my son, I was listening almost exclusively to podcasts about health and pregnancy. It might have something to do with adults putting a premium on our time. But then how do we explain our Netflix queues? We’re more task-oriented by day at least—get up, get the baby up, get fed, start work, exercise, make dinner, Netflix and chill, and go to bed. If there’s time to squeeze in a podcast, it’s always while multitasking, getting my son outside for fresh air, or while running errands in my car. But the Class of 2020 has more time to pursue their own curiosities.
Having a curious mind, stepping outside of our lanes for a while, can shed light and new perspective on the task at hand.
In marketing, if we only ever compared our campaigns to what other hotels were doing, if we only ever took cues from other hotels, that would be pretty boring. We’d all end up doing the same thing. We’d end up saying the same thing and sounding the same. This would make it more difficult for consumers to choose one hotel over the other, and they’d end up using something like price as a stronger factor in their decision making process. They’d be less loyal to us, and more loyal to the almighty dollar.
If you adopted a beginner’s mind, what would you be doing in spare time, what would you be listening to or reading? Where would you find inspiration if you had no lanes or blinders put up? A good place to start is to think about brands that inspire you outside of hospitality. What do you love about them? Become a subscriber to their email list, and see what you can glean from their communications.
Let’s recap.
From Victoria, we learned about how to use technology to get words on paper as quickly as we’ve thought of them—by using voice to text and shaving off hours from writing communications both internally and externally.
We also talked about Ruby and Naomi, my nieces who have an app for everything—including Grammarly, which is a great tool for those of us who write everyday.
We talked about how the Class of 2020 uses social media to connect and seek out inspiration. We talked about FOMO as a marketing tactic, and how we should be on the forefront of testing out the latest and greatest social media features and platforms.
Finally, we talked about exploring outside of your lane. How investing time into seeking out knowledge across different disciplines, could save you time in front of your computer trying to keep up with the Joneses—the hotel around the corner. By getting outside of your lane, you’ll find a wealth of fresh ideas, you may even strike gold.
If we can stay curious, we’ll expand our own worldview much like the Class of 2020 is doing right now, to think more creatively about the task at hand and our future.
So now, I turn this one over to you. Maybe like me, you learned something from The Class of 2020. Maybe you’ve learned something from Victoria, Ruby or Naomi today. Leave a comment below to let me know.
As always, keep sharing your stories.
