Yesterday I received some fascinating emails from Garry Traynor, Principal of Sydney Community College. He has a facility on his College web site which lets him know which other web sites are referring people to his site. He innocently clicked on a number of these URLs and found they were blog sites for what he called Generation Y – twentysomethings or thereabouts - born between 1979-1994. The blog sites included active discussion among groups of friends about the language courses at his College and which ones the bloggers thought interesting and worth taking.
Garry sent me a note about it and when I looked at these same blog sites, I felt like Mark Latham might have felt the other day, looking through the windows into the 'Big Brother' household: curious, voyeuristic and a bit invasive. The young adults’ blogging discussions about language courses were mixed in with other idle chatter and flirting.
What to do with such information is the question the Garry Traynor asked himself. As he said to me in an email (which he is happy for me to share with you):
The Gen Y thing has been happening for some time. A lot of our marketing effort is focused at that target. Seems like blogs could open a new method to promote... But on the other hand... like SMS, a blog is very private and in there is its strength. If we lever in... I feel we will be snubbed and probably punished.
Interesting new issues are emerging for e-marketing about blogs, SMS and the Y Generation.
Garry and I and many others in the world of adult and community education (ACE) are very interested in the thinking, lifestyles and learning-style preferences of the Generation Y, as they represent the next wave of ACE students - provided ACE understands them and can cater for their evolving needs.
It seems timely for educational marketers in the ACE and VET sectors to start understanding more about Generation Y and blogs...without being invasive.
I have asked Garry to share his thinking about these areas at the next meeting of the ACE NSW Business Development Group, of which Garry is a member and I am the facilitator/consultant.