The #FreeDorothy Tweets aren’t just viral and funny,

How long can you live without social media? Some could give it up instantly, but that wasn’t the case for a teenager in America when her mother took away her phone. Following a series of tweets about not being able to post, she finally finds a way to do it using a smart LG fridge.

This created the trending #FreeDorothy campaign which went viral overnight, even being picked up by celebrities and Twitter itself. So, what does these hilarious and innocent tweets teach us? We can learn that social media, or rather our constant connection with social media, is a powerful medium that, if used correctly, is an excellent marketing tool.

How #FreeDorothy Started

From what seems to be a typical mother-daughter dispute, the teen girl’s phone was taken away by the mom as showcased in the first of a series of tweets. Not discouraged by her mother’s parenting tactics, she quickly starts using other tools to connect with her audience. The first was with a Nintendo 3DS, where she announced the start of her phoneless troubles.

The mother, still in possession of the daughter’s iPhone, sees that she is posting using her Nintendo and tweets that she will close the account. Then came the final, viral tweet. The daughter was able to connect her Twitter account to the LG Smart Fridge and tweet from there.

Amazing! We can only applaud her resilience.

But Why Does It Matter?

At first glance, it’s just another disgruntled teenager acting out against a parent. But, if we closely analyse it, we see someone who’s sole desire was to connect with an online audience rather than simply embracing their digital-free time.

This strong desire to stay connected shows us the power that social media offers individuals, and that companies who wish to connect with younger audiences and millennials need to understand this connection, respect it and try to align with it.

How Many People Use Social Media?

Over 4.3 billion people use the internet in 2019 with 3.4 billion of them active on a social media platform! This is an astonishing figure considering the number of people with access to stable, affordable internet.

These figures will certainly grow in the future as the number of mobile phone users increased to 5.1 billion in 2019 which makes going mobile-first highly important. We discussed it in a previous article and recommend you take a look here.

How To Connect With Teenagers

This question is on the minds of many marketing professionals around the world, how to connect with younger audiences and millennials. They are a tough audience to sync with as the content and context is fluid.

One day, it’s serious and factual while the next day over 500 000 people sign up to raid Area 51 to free aliens. Yes, it’s a mix of content with little context, and that is the trick to connecting with millennials. It is about understanding the current mood.

One mistake companies and professional organisations make when they try to connect with younger audiences is to be extremely serious and far too scared to steer from their CI or tone of voice.

We aren’t saying you should start posting memes and talk in acronyms, but you can care less about perfect grammar. The term ‘’Grammer Nazi’’ is quite common and is viewed as being good at writing, however what is the point of your content being grammatically perfect but it gets zero engagement.

Want to see how your brand can align with the current mood of social media trends? Connect with us and we’ll look at what your business should do to stay relevant.

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