Tata Consultancy Services, a leading global company focusing on IT services, digital and business solutions, completed a study \u201cSocial Media is Serious Business: A View from European Youth\u201d<\/a> about social media usage across Europe, where they surveyed 5,000 young people from 15 countries.\u00a0 The results of the study and the #GenerationDirect campaign indicate that the importance of social media among young (i.e., Millennial) entrepreneurs cannot be overstated.\u00a0 Thirty-three percent of this group utilize social media on a daily basis, with its uses ranging from hiring, client communication, networking, collaboration and skill development.\u00a0 Specifically, 60% of young entrepreneurs indicate that social media helps them find freelance employees, and 41% are in touch with their clients via social media on a daily basis.\u00a0 Furthermore, 62% of the sample use social media to grow their business network. \u00a0In essence, social media has become a fundamental aspect of growing and sustaining a business for Millennial entrepreneurs. As the theme of this year\u2019s Peter Drucker Forum is called \u201cThe Entrepreneurial Society,\u201d it is clear that a substantial portion of this society now exists on social media.<\/p>\n The emphasis on social media among young entrepreneurs reflects a larger generational shift regarding the demographical makeup of the global workforce.\u00a0 Millennials (those born between 1982-1994) will make up 75% of the world\u2019s workers by the year 2025 and are considered \u2018digital natives\u2019 as the first generation to come of age with the internet and smart phones.\u00a0 For this generation, the use of social media is second nature and a natural part of their daily existence. \u00a0Beyond their comfort level with technology and their every-increasing presence at work, this generation has received wide spread attention in popular media for their perceived workplace behavior, stereotypically being seen as a job-hopping, entitled bunch.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, in a study I recently co-authored, \u201cMisunderstood Millennial Talent: The Other Ninety-One Percent\u201d<\/a>, we found that the stereotypes are largely untrue.\u00a0 For the 91% of Millennials that are not financially privileged, only 10% are considering leaving their current job in the next year.\u00a0 In fact, Millennials face intense financial pressure, with over half of Millennials needing to take out student loans to pay for their undergraduate education and 43% having loans totaling $40,000 or more. The overall student debt in the U.S. alone in 2014 was over $1.2 trillion. This generation is predicted for the first time in modern history to be worse off than their own parent\u2019s generations. With such significant financial strain all over the world, many Millennials have turned to social media for help.\u00a0 The Tata consultancy study indicates that social media helps young entrepreneurs have access to funding that perhaps would not have been available before these platforms existed.\u00a0 Furthermore, young workers in general are using social media to improve their chances for employment and command a stronger voice in the world.<\/p>\n While the use of social media is clearly ubiquitous among Millennials, it can be easy to forget how new our reliance on technology still is.\u00a0 The iPhone did not exist as recently as 10 years ago, Facebook did not exist as recently as 13 years ago, and LinkedIn did not exist as recently as 15 years ago.\u00a0 Therefore, we are just scratching the surface on the various ways to capitalize on the business benefit of social media.\u00a0 The room for innovation in this regard knows no bounds.\u00a0 One recent area of growth has been digital learning.\u00a0 According to the Tata study, 42% of young entrepreneurs in Europe believe that the skills which they acquire online will make them more marketable in other industries.\u00a0 Additionally, the acquisition of new skills could make it easier for this generation to find what it is they are passionate about and find a job or career which reflects that.\u00a0 In our study, 72% of Millennials indicated that Meaning and Purpose were very important to them in their work, which was higher than any other single factor. And how they define it is far from the superficial portrayed in the mainstream media. 71% say achieving the goals set before them and being seen as a valued contributor to their supervisor and teammates is a defining aspect of Meaning and Purpose.\u00a0 If Millennials can leverage the tools that social media offers to align their career with their personal skills and interests, they will be more likely to achieve meaning in their work.\u00a0 Tata consultancy\u2019s study also reported that 50% of young workers have used social media to sign an online petition, indicating the potential for the Millennial generation to contribute to societal causes that they find meaningful through social media platforms.<\/p>\n To quote Peter Drucker once again, he said that \u201cresults are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.\u201d\u00a0 Social media presents an enormous opportunity for young entrepreneurs to continue finding creative ways to build their brands, dynamically serve their clients, cultivate relationships with colleagues and consumers, and explore new frontiers within this young digital society.\u00a0 Of course, not all social media behaviors are entrepreneurial, but the resources and platform it provides enables young individuals to act entrepreneurially in a way that was recently not possible.\u00a0 This suggests that the current generation of digital natives could be the most entrepreneurial that we\u2019ve seen to date.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joan Snyder Kuhl<\/strong><\/p>\n Joan Kuhl is the author of three books: Misunderstood Millennial Talent<\/em>, Peter Drucker\u2019s Five Most Important Questions<\/em>, and The First Global Generation.\u00a0 <\/em>After 14 years in the pharmaceutical industry and building her thought leadership as a campus speaker, mentor and coach, Joan Kuhl launched Why Millennials Matter<\/a>. \u00a0Why Millennials Matter is a training, research and consulting company based in New York City that focuses on raising awareness about the value of investing in Millennial employees and as consumers.\u00a0 Joan leads workshops for executives, managers, and early career professionals to bridge the gap in communication and share strategies for stronger connection and collaboration. Her international speaking engagements and consulting have impacted leaders from over 60 countries.\u00a0 Clients include Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Discovery Communications, FINRA, Novo Nordisk, Viacom, Bayer, the NY Mets and Bristol Myers Squibb.\u00a0 Joan is the Career Expert for Barnes & Noble College and host of the #Passion2Action podcast, which serves over 5.2 Million students across 725+ college campuses. She is a Research Fellow at The Center for Talent Innovation<\/a>. She serves as a board member of The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute and Cosmopolitan Magazine Millennial Advisory Board.\u00a0 Best-selling author Marshall Goldsmith named Joan as the \u201cthe Next Generation’s Top Executive Coach\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Follow Joan on Twitter: @joankuhl<\/a> Instagram: @WhyMillennialsMatter In his seminal book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Peter Drucker said that \u201centrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait.\u201d\u00a0 That<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[141,172],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"joan_snyder_kuhl\"](\"https:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/joan_snyder_kuhl.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n2016 publications: Harvard Business Review<\/a> and Leader to Leader Journal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"