So video is going vertical and everyone has thoughts about it. But once you get past your own thoughts, let's take a minute to seriously think about the ideal user.

A recent study by Pew shows a substantial amount of millennials leaving the major social media platforms, but keeping their Instagram and Snapchat accounts. We might be on Facebook and LinkedIn, but they're sick of the drama and ads. Facebook's most recent ad campaign is still fighting the negative attention from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. So why does it matter?

Well, for a while people talked about millennials not buying cars and now they're taking it back. Ultimately, millennials had student loans and social lives they were trying to fund, but they're starting to start to regain some buying power in the overall industry. Auto loans for millennials are up 21% from last year. Enter IGTV...

So IGTV is Instagram's newest offering to compete with YouTube's long-form content style. Video is vertical and the interface caters to UI built off other millennial focused apps like Snapchat and Tinder. As with all new platforms, the earlier you can get on, the stronger chance you'll have of building a dedicated following.

DealersCompressed.com has covered the ins-and-outs of dealers struggling to communicate with millennials, but this could be the fresh start dealers need. This is a chance to engage with a growing audience in a way that they want to be communicated with. 

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying start posting to IGTV with videos of your most ambitious salesperson yelling prices and a catchphrase while walking through the dealership lot. If you take ANYTHING away from this post, it should be this:

We need to get better about understanding our customer and here's a perfect chance to do so. Communicate in a way they want to be communicated with. Communicate the things THEY care about, not the things you care about. Empathy is the key to overcoming these communication hurdles.