5 Tips to Take to Your Social Media Listening and Engagement to the Next Level

(this post originally appeared on:  http://www.radian6.com/blog/2012/11/5-tips-to-take-to-your-social-media-listening-and-engagement-to-the-next-level/)

Let’s say you’ve taken the plunge into the social media listening and engagement pool, but now what? You really want to leverage your listening and engagement tools to have maximum impact and ensure that you meet your corporate objectives. Here are 5 quick tips to help you do this: 

1. Focus on your Key Performance Objectives (KPIs) 

The most important point to remember is that your social activities, including your listening and engagement, should be tied directly to your business goals. A good way to stay on track is to stay aligned with your KPIs. Staying focused will ensure that you and your organization benefit the most from social initiatives. 


2. Focus on Lead Measures Versus Lag Measures 

Also referred to as “business drivers,” leading indicators measure the actions that your Engagement Team, aka your Community Team, does for the company’s medium to long-term success. They show what is currently happening and serve as an early warning sign that change may be needed in a particular area. As a result, your Engagement Team will play a key role in recognizing and escalating trends or issues before they become significant. 

3. Commit to Having the Right People

Listening and engaging is not for the faint at heart. It takes people who are passionate about people, and passionate about being social. Make the commitment up front to have individuals who love people, and working with people and who have an eye for the big picture. Equally important is having people who not only know how to interpret KPIs, but understand the importance of timely, relevant reporting. Finally, your team should know the right balance between when to be serious and when to be light-hearted. After all, we all need to have fun while we work. 

4. Understand the Importance of Reporting

Regardless of which tool you are using, if you can’t generate useful reports for your management team, you are in trouble. Members of your Engagement Team are excellent resources to generate such reports. They are intimately familiar with the various conversations taking place. Make sure that they know and regularly prepare brand, competitive and research reports. More importantly, ensure that your management team is getting the reporting that they need. 

5. Recognize the Power of Community and Influencers 

Building a loyal following of customers, prospects, and influencers is more important than many realize. While building relationships takes time, when done properly an organization will not only learn about preferences, ideas or needs of its communities, but the community itself can become your greatest advocate. Advocates and influencers are particularly powerful when they share your information, value proposition, and message on your behalf. 
Focus on your community and you will realize quite quickly you come full circle and be back at focusing on your KPIs.

In Social Media, What is Engagement?

For me, this is a big question.  I have my own opinion of course, but let's look at this issue.

I see many articles and blog discussions on this topic.  Many center on engagement being about how many "Likes" are attributed to a brand page or a specific post on a brand page.  Similarly people also look at how many shares a post has, to judge whether or not there is engagement.

I look at engagement differently however.  Let's go old school for a moment while I dust off the old 'New Collins Dictionary" and look up engage. There are 11 different definitions, some related to marriage, but here is the one relevant to this discussion: "to involve (a person or his attention) intensely."  If I look at engagement, the definition relevant to this discussion is: "a promise, obligation, or other condition that binds."

When we look at these definitions then, it becomes more apparent that engagement in  is much more than a "Like" or a "share".  A like does not involve two or more people being intensely involved in anything.  A "Like" doesn't involve an obligation or a promise to do anything.  I can say that I "like" Land Rovers, but I have no connection to the brand or any individual behind the brand.  I am  simply stating, here in this blog post, that I "like" Land Rovers.  Even if I visited their Facebook page once in my entire life and liked the page, what does that mean?  I may never return to the page and more importantly I may never buy a Land Rover.  My preference in "dream car" might change as well.  It has before.  So, while "Likes" are nice, it does not, in my opinion, mean engagement.

The other side of that equation is how does a brand respond/engage with someone who likes them?  Do they say "thank you for liking us?"  Probably not.  So, again there is no real engagement.

For me, engagement really comes down to people interacting with one another.  It is about a relationship.  It is about a conversation or multiple conversations.  Hmmm...what does this sound like?  It sounds like the goal and objective behind social media. In the words of Erik Qualman, it is about relationships and not technology.  The technology is just making it easier for us to connect as people.  Engagement is all about someone responding to a post and either asking or question or starting a discussion. Sharing a post comes a little closer to engagement. It is assumed that the person sharing was interested enough in the post to share with his or her friends/followers.  


I stress that engagement is about the relationship and wanting people that you care about to read something that could be relevant/helpful to them.  It is about them conversing with you about your brand, your product or even the friendship that you have developed.  Engagement is a relationship.  

Do you agree or disagree with my definition on engagement? 

For more reading on social media, check out The Ostrich Effect.