On the surface, engagement in social media seems quite simple. Social network users can “like” posts, comment on them, or share them. They can also create their own posts about brands or upload images featuring branded products, sharing these on their profiles or the brand’s page. Users may further engage with brands by “Liking” them on Facebook, which makes them fans of the brand, or by following the brand on Twitter (on Google+, fans add brands to their circles). These actions help spread the brand’s message to other users connected to the engaged individual, thereby amplifying it. Engagement also serves as an informal endorsement of the brand’s message, similar to product placement in movies and TV shows. Wharton refers to this as earned messaging or earned marketing. However, engagement involves more than just these basic actions.
What is engagement in social media?
Engaging on social media should create and maintain a relationship that resembles a genuine friendship. This includes being open, expressive, interacting regularly, and giving back. Therefore, engagement should feel real, resembling a chat between friends instead of a sales pitch. If not, social media engagement turns into a “nice way of discussing audience, consumer demographics, and segmentation while appearing mindful of Internet users, their culture, and community.”
By the same token, engagement in social media is much more than technology, although effective engagement requires an understanding of the technology underpinning social media. Understanding how messages travel through specific social media platforms, for instance, is critical for message sharing. Expertise in creating engagement tools, such as sharing buttons on blogs and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds is also required. While tools and technologies enable engagement, message content creates engagement.
Creating engagement in social media
Engagement marketing involves more than understanding computer and mobile technologies, apps, software, and computer language, just as traditional advertising is more than simply visual technology, music, video creation, and printing. Engagement marketing is not merely a simple combination of traditional advertising and public relations, with elements of customer service thrown in, as suggested by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group. Engagement in social media is a distinctly different type of communication supporting true relationships and requiring an approach with deep consumer understanding, support, and value extending beyond the exchange of commercial communication. Engagement in social media looks more like a commercial friendships, using authenticity, transparency, empathy, and celebrating the value of the network, not the firm.
Effective engagement in social media requires brand actions
But, engagement in social media can’t stop at creating a friendship with your network. You must exert subtle effort to get your target market to do what you need them to do — buy your brand. I interviewed some folks on Google+ and one of them stated this very well:
Like you said, engagement is a tricky definition to understand. I think each person has their own interpretation of the word. Some may feel it is an interaction between two people, a company and consumer, etc. I think social media engagement goes far beyond the comments back and forth. Yes, dialogue between two people or companies, or a combination of the two is necessary to properly engage one another, [but] I think engagement in social media has more to do with what is being done to entice a decision. Buy, or not to buy. Sign up, or don’t sign up. I would have to say engagement in social media is the formation of a relationship with the intent to make a decision or form an opinion.
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