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“Engagement.” Forget word of the day – it’s the word of the year. Engagement is the new girl in school that everyone wants to be friends with. While it’s a wildly important concept to grasp, the term has also become somewhat of a buzzword. We decided it’s time we step back and take a moment to consider, ‘What is ‘engagement’?’
Engagement is all about evolving relationships. In real life, relationships are built overtime: grown through trust and mutual respect. In the marketing world, authentic customer-brand relationships are no different.
Understanding that engagement is about building relationships helps clarify what it means to “engage” with customers, or for customers to “engage” with you. Basically, any activity that works towards a mutually beneficial relationship would fall under the category of “engagement.” Just look to your Facebook page – the customers who constantly share, like, and adding comments- those are the customers who are building a connection with your brand. But it’s a two-way street. You have to listen to what they say, dive into the conversation and move the relationship forward in order for it to really count as “engagement.”
But is this whole concept of “engagement” here to stay?
Here’s what our CEO, Riley, has to say about that:
“The businesses that scale their customer engagement are gathering intelligence, ideas, and building advocacy at a pace we could not imagine ten years ago. The complete social enterprise will not see market research, innovation, product launches, and promotions as silos strung together in a linear process. These elements will be tightly linked and all part of an iterative process whereby customers are involved in providing insights, stories, and ideas that build ownership in a brand.”
The basic fact is engagement is an essential factor or end-result of a successful social media strategy. It is the foundation for consumer conversations to transform into fan loyalty.
Top image from Imgembed.
This is a cross-post from Napkin Labs blog.