Why Social Media Makes it Possible for Gen-y to Succeed

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It’s challenging for members of the Gen-Y grouping to succeed without some pathway to Gen-X. Social media has emerged as a channel, by which Gen-Y can communicate with Gen-X, freely, readily and with scale.

Starting a blog is really a simple process, which doesn’t require much learning by members of Gen-Y because they are already bred through school to pickup new technologies at a rapid pace. Most business students have web development built into their curriculum, therefore the concept of a blog is logical to them. Social networks cling to Gen-Y before they even laid eyes on Gen-X. Forums, wiki’s and other forms of collaboration and communication are social and scholastic tools used as well.

Gen-Y and Gen-X both share one commonality online: they are users. Users have social media tools at their disposal and the freedom to subscribe or unsubscribe from blogs, to discard emails, to opt out of forums and to edit a wiki, neglecting other’s input. The user is king in this web 2.0 world.

Since Gen-Y and Gen-X can both use social media to converse, they both realize that they can actually help each other out. For instance, a Gen-Y blog that has comments from Gen-X’ers, will prove to be more credible and Gen-X comments on Gen-Y blogs, will pull in new ways and techniques that Gen-X isn’t prone to hearing.

By having these contact points, Gen-Y can quickly reach out to Gen-X and ask for mentorship and opportunities, like they never could before. Blogs and social networks carry email, phone and commenting services that allow you to ping Gen-X’ers. Oh and guess what, Gen-X is very receptive. More than ever before. Thank you Gen-X for nurturing and supporting our personal brands.

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

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