Social Media Marketing

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ENGAGEMENT ON THE S

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Engagement as a Customer Activity

The Social Web creates an expectation from the customer’s perspective—whether a

prior, current, or potential (future) customer—of a two-way relationship with brands,

products, and services that was nearly unthinkable just a generation of business ago.

Customers now have a real voice that—in advertising lingo—resonates with others

who share their lot: Just as soon as your awareness campaign has done its job, they’ll

use their new collaborative tools to vet your claims and promises. They’ll ask questions

of each other and share outcomes, and in the process exert influence on pending or

potential decisions of all involved. It’s a kind of group-think, gone wild.

At the heart of engagement is a fundamental connection between the business

and the customer, a connection where the customer is not a “target” but is rather an

equal partner. This shift in perspective is significant and will be difficult for many busi-

nesses to fully embrace. Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang put it this way:

“Companies know the problem will get worse before it gets better. Organiza-

tions realize they are no longer in charge. They often lack a credible strategy

that empowers their employees to catch up with their customers.”

The very term “engagement” needs to be rethought in this context.

Among marketers, engagement is generally taken as a measure of how involved

someone is with a piece of content or an activity that is provided through email, a

banner ad or a website. Traditional marketing and the time-tested and proven efforts

that move potential customers through the purchase funnel still apply. In this view of

engagement, however, the customer is seen as rather like a fish by a fisherman, with

the measurement of “engagement” resting on the amount of time spent by the fish as it

considers the lure.

It’s important to understand whose perspective we are viewing engagement

from, because in social marketplaces it is the perspective of the fish—not the fisher-

man—that matters most. Measuring engagement in a traditional context still matters:

Knowing which ads “get bites” and which don’t is of obvious interest. From the fisher-

man’s point of view, it’s good to catch the attention of a fish—but simply attracting

attention isn’t enough. To move from attention to serious involvement, you need to

adopt the fish’s point of view. Ideally, you want the fish to design the lure for you, to

show you where in the pond it spends its time, and to invite its friends to the party.

Learn to Think Like a Fish

When you turn your perspective around to the viewpoint of your customers, the

mechanics of engagement change. From the perspective of the fish, it is not the lure that

is “engaging.” Rather, it is the act of eating, driven by a more fundamental interest—

like the instinct of survival—that results in the fish being “engaged.” The lure looks

like a meal, and fish think a lot about eating. Simply put, successfully catching a fish