The Millenial BS Meter: Manning your brand’s community battle station

As a member of the Millennial generation, I can tell you that we’re like bloodhounds.

We sniff out legit content on the web.

We can smell stale stuffing before we even open your app. Read your blog. Whatever.

As a result, it’s absolutely critical that whomever is manning the battlestations of social community must not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.

The OIA Outdoor University sessions at the OR Show in Salt Lake City in August focused a lot of energy talking about the influence of Millennials (aka Generation Y), and the buying power that they hold in the industry.

Now, like many of you, I’m outside as much as possible. In the summer I climb or hike in the Wasatch almost everyday, and in the winter I get out on my splitboard at least 3 days a week; all before 9am.

Before, during and after my excursions, I’m online. Screenburn is becoming as much of a health risk as sunburn.

This increased exposure to content gives us a lot of room to compare what you’re producing with what everyone else does, and our internal BS meters are always on red alert.

Nomenclature, best-practices, environment, politics; we are current on all of it, so if you’ve been tasked with community management, you had better be too.

I am constantly grateful that I rub shoulders with a bunch of people who have decades of experience in the outdoors as guides, instructors, manufacturers, patrollers, retailers, and athletes, each bringing to the table a wealth of current know-how that pays off when it comes time to deliver legit content to our clients.

It’s real, and all those Millennials out there, myself included, can tell.

If you’re doing social media, and you’re an outdoor brand, really let that soul come through in your writing, your pictures, your everything.

My friends and I will appreciate it.