Engagement, What Is It?

Engagement, now that’s a funny word. Most people think about proposals, rings, romance.

I think about people and engaging with those people to grow my business.

This used to be just called Word of Mouth (WoM) marketing, but now it’s all about social media and growing your presence through engagement.

Sounds great in theory, but with so many different social media platforms how do you do it.

As I know from experience it doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s not as simple as sending out an email or direct mail, counting the responses, click throughs and getting your results.

Engagement is all about finding good content and reacting to it, by sharing, retweeting, commenting, generally being involved to get your name, business, brand etc out there.

Moving with the times

Old style marketing was all about broadcasting your brand, offer, product etc, usually through advertising, to your target market. With so many more ways to communicate consumers are now wise to this type of marketing and look elsewhere. They look to brands, companies and so on who want to have a conversation with them, and offer interesting facts, content and images outside of just their main brand.

Think about yourself, do you get fed up with Facebook adverts or posts constantly telling you to buy, buy, buy and scroll past them or even block them out, but stop to look at the fun, interesting, unusual images, videos and posts.

That’s why content marketing and engagement is so important.

But don’t be scared and think you have to come up with all the content by yourself, engagement can be about seeing a great Facebook post or tweet and just reposting it, with a comment. Or commenting on the actual post or tweet to engage with the original poster.

More importantly, a quick well worded response to a customer query will show that you have a brand that listens and responds to your audience. Remember, your clientele have followers too and your interaction is visible to all of them, as well as the wider Twitter community.

So with all that in mind I’m off to scour my social media platforms for good content to share.

Blog originally published here.