I know you were looking forward to a word from Curtis today, but instead I’m here to give you a bit of perspective from the oft-criticized Millennial generation. My name is Caroline, and I’m the Content Marketing Manager at the Curtis Zimmerman Group.
Millennials are slowly infiltrating the workforce around the country, and according to this infographic by Forbes Magazine, 36% of the United States workforce will be made up of Millennials by 2014, and by 2020, we’ll make up a whomping 46%.
While these statistics may represent the simple passing of time and the natural maturation of a generation, I think it also has to do with this month’s theme of staying current. As an ease with a number of electronic devices becomes a more necessary skill, and the use of a multitude of social networks becomes less of a game and more of a formal business strategy, Millennials who grew up with social media and electronics become more and more attractive to older generations.
In the past I may have felt foolish about the time I’ve spent on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and WordPress and Tumblr and Instagram and Snapchat, just to name a few. But the fact is, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you saw it posted on one of those networks. Now, rather than viewing the time spent on social media as wasted time, I view it as developing skills I will use in the workplace to help sell products and services more effectively.
Part of staying current as a tech-savvy millennial is to apply what you already know in new ways.
If you already know the kinds of posts to write that will engage your peers, why not apply that knowledge to write posts that will engage potential customers?
I’ve often heard the advice that if you want to get into a certain field, start a blog about it. For most Millennials, starting a blog on WordPress is no problem. More often than not, however, blogs that are enthusiastically begun one week lie abandoned by the next. If you want to take what you already know — how to use Facebook and Twitter and WordPress — to the next level, start analyzing your blog stats. What kinds of posts, at what time, publicized to what networks engage the most readers? Spend the next 30 days and see if you can double your traffic. If you can do that and then show a company that you can do the same for them, you’ll have job offers coming at you on every platform.
The job market is tough, there’s no denying it. Don’t let yourself be defeated thinking you’ve got nothing special to offer. You have yourself, and when you apply yourself and the things you already know, there’s no limit to what you can do.
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As a speaker and author, Curtis Zimmerman has impacted over one million people with his life-changing messages and award-winning programs. Curtis is an expert at transforming organizations by inspiring individuals to live their lives at performance level.
Want to be inspired? Check out his podcast The Next 24 Hours.
