• by Evan Bailyn , December 2, 2008

Let's start with some basics ... America's tweens spend billions of their own dollars each year on purchases for themselves, and also have considerable influence over major family purchase decisions. They are Internet-savvy, highly social consumers. Not surprisingly, thousands of marketers are trying to attract their attention when they go online. Building truly engaging content is the single most effective way to reach these potential customers. Nothing can replace the power of truly meaningful content that matters to tweens. Once that is in place, it is important to consider some realities when addressing this cohort, which generally includes kids ages 8 to 14.

 

1. Tweens jump around. They do not sit still, and they do not spend all their time in one environment. But they do spend a LOT of time on the Internet. You need to be where they are most of the time, which is everywhere on the Internet.

2. Tweens want a voice. Your site should give them plenty outlets, so let them manage their own accounts, create content, easily post their opinions. This content can be very influential because as any of you know who are raising a person of this age, tweens listen to each other more than anyone else.

3. Tweens have an endless appetite for interaction. It is important to give them a means to connect with others and talk to each other... whether it be chat, a forum or sharing tools.

Let me now recommend a free tool that can help you capture the attention of tweens and addresses these characteristics. A few months ago we created our own community toolbar using Conduit and we are really happy with the results. Here is why I like it:

• Our users are online all the time and community toolbar helps to keep our brand there all the time ... wherever they go. The toolbar puts the Cartoon Doll Emporium brand in the browser window of our customers and so no matter where they go on the Internet, there we are. I don't have to wait for them to come to my site anymore.

• It is not an intrusive communication tool (tweens don't like to be "marketed to") and we were able to put all of our features on it that we know our tweens like best (games, chat, private messages, reputation points, profiles, friends, etc.) and so it's really sticky.

• Our community toolbar also enables us to be immediately responsive to requests and feedback from the tweens. If they want a new feature on the toolbar, we can usually add it in minutes and the updates pushes live instantly to every toolbar.

• It's free and it's on-demand, so it can be scalable and grow with us. Our CDE toolbar works just as well for 100,000 users as with 100.