Manhattan Marketing Maven

6 Social Media Tactics from al-Qeada

Consumers have always been brand stakeholders. People have always liked, shared, interacted and promoted brands they find useful or identify with. In the olden days, brand advocacy was done face to face or over the phone at a small, disconnected scale. Brand marketers had the illusion of control. They believed they set the brand agenda and directed the brand evolution. Social media changed all that. 

Social media holds up a mirror to the brand asking, “Who are you and what do you stand for?” says Cindy Gallop. More importantly social media gives consumers a direct stake in the evolution of a brand. Two-way conversation invites consumers into dialog and, in June Cohen’s view, delivered at Mashable Connect, “lets others grab onto it and lets others run with it … a band without followers is just a lame idea.” The co-creation of a brand promises to add more real-time intelligence, infuse more real emotion and “create collaboration and collective buy-in between founders, stewards, fans and advocates.”   

“Imagine” June wonders, drawing on the lessons from the development of the TED brand, “if brand fans and advocates were enrolled and empowered to develop messages and engagement programs versus a handful of marketers sitting in a dark room worrying about how to control the brand and stave off unintended consequences?” The possibilities for openness, broad scale sharing, harnessing genuine enthusiasm and loyalty or mobilizing a larger brand community multiply. 

The trade offs are control for conversation and centralization for dispersion.

The new distributed branding model might be taken directly from the al-Qaeda playbook; enroll and mobilize discrete groups of brand advocates to develop relationships and conversations in their own way targeted to their own niches with an overarching common goal.

Let loose the reins and enable the true believers to spread the word on your behalf in their own time and way. Accept the idea that there are many paths to goodness and let them play out. Understand the brand’s marketing program as the backbone of an otherwise amorphous multi-headed creature that will make its way into the culture virally carrying and advancing the brand message. Accept the notion that marketers do not have a monopoly on good ideas. 

Should you be brave enough to countenance al-Qaeda-like brand governance, use June Cohen’s six rules of the road to “become more of a brand steward and less of a brand dictator” while keeping in loose touch with your disconnected cells of fervent followers.

1. Feed the hunger for participation. People want to belong and contribute, especially people who use and care for your brand. Let them join up and figure how best to participate on their own terms.
2. Encourage sharing and viral connections. Let the word spread organically. More sharing = more advocacy=deeper brand relationships.
3. Listen to users. They know the brand as well or better than you. They know where you should go, what you should do next and how you should frame the message. Users can be your brand compass. Mine their ideas. Co-create the brand.
4. Reach everywhere. Embrace channels, platforms, devices and changing media habits. Let the word go out in whatever form and to whatever device it naturally reaches. Let the brand advocates run with the ball. Accept adaptation and experimentation and embrace the ideas that work best.
5. Tell a good story. Without strong storytelling, your brand will die of loneliness. Your story must be distinctive enough to break through the clutter. Arm your advocates with content that they can adapt and share in a variety of contexts.
6. Provide clear strict guidelines. Enforce them. Develop repercussions for those who break the rules or violate the brand’s core tenets. Regulate advocate activities one at a time.

 

In Social Media -- Timing is Everything

Nielsen recently released State of the Media Advertising & Audiences. It got me thinking about timing and digital media. While time has been a critical planning factor in traditional media, digital marketers don’t think in terms of prime time, roadblocks or time triggered communications as much as their offline counterparts. 

That strikes me, as a missed opportunity since timing is everything in life and in marketing. Perhaps the reason is a lack of data on behavior or the absence of consensus on digital, social and mobile media use.  And yet digital, mobile and social media have distinct usage patterns. 

The average American spends 60 hours a month online visiting 89 domains and 2646 unique pages by logging in an average of 57 times. Half use the Internet everyday and most of them are on Facebook. According to BuzzFeed from a low point at 5a, Internet traffic grows steadily until lunchtime. After a meal time dip, volume grows modestly for another hour or two to a 4p daily peak which declines slowly but steadily from mid to late evening. 

Huge numbers of people wake up and check e-mail. Loads of people buy stuff online at lunchtime or post Facebook status updates during their workday. By mid-afternoon, after school, there’s another activity spike, which then is echoed after dinner, 8p through midnight, as multi-tasking consumers watch prime time TV with their smart phones, laptops or tablets in hand commenting or tweeting on plots, checking sports scores, posting to blogs or communities or looking up or buying stuff they saw on TV. And many of us also make a last e-mail or social media check before bed. 

When you think of it this way, there are patterns worth testing and probably a substantial case for marketing at specific times to address specific offers and the persistent fear of missing out, now dubbed FOMO by the pundits. In some cases, consumers use different digital platforms at different times for different purposes, like tablets for TV or video viewing or smartphones for online banking and location-based check-ins. 

Consider these data points: 

• Facebook’s most consistent spike is Wednesday at 3pm
• Facebook predictably spikes at 11a, 3p and 8p daily
• Facebook posts appearing before 9a get more comments and shares than others
• Facebook posts at the top of the hour get more virility
• Facebook posts on Saturday draw the most Likes
• Most Facebook shares happen at Noon
• Facebook CTR’s top out on Tuesday and Wednesdays
• Sunday is Facebook slowest day

• Twitter has daily traffic peaks at Noon, 4p and 11p
• Lowest Twitter volume is at 7a
• Peak tweet volume is Friday
• Peek re-tweet days are Wednesday-Friday
• Peak re-tweet time is 5p
• Highest CTR on Twitter is at Noon and 6p 

• Saturday morning is prime time for sharing on Pinterest
• E-mail has the strongest CTR on Saturday and Sunday
• Blogs draw the most comments on Saturday
• Blog posts at 8a prompt the most clicks, views and comments
• Cisco says 9p-1a are peak global Internet use times – 25%of all traffic
• US Internet use peaks at 11p ET
• Peak mobile usage is at 5p daily with a secondary spike at 9p

• Online gaming grows 60% after 2p and spikes between 8-11p
• Game console use spikes Thursday evenings
• Online video viewing peaks at Midnight
• IMing is constant throughout the day, but reaches 80% of peak at 10a

• Sharing across networks peaks at 9:30a
• Social media (all networks) peaks at 11p ET
• Wednesday is the top sharing day
• 75% of clicks occur within 1 day of posting
• Most clicks occur 2 minutes after content is posted
• 12% of all clicks come from mobile devices

According to Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist at bit.ly, social media content follows a “burst and decay” pattern with attention spiking within the first few hours of a post and then steadily decaying into a trough. Immediacy and “newness” are factors in influencing the relative reach and virility of posts. Posts degrade from birth, much like an atomic isotope. Bit.ly has tracked these patterns by network and pegs the shelf life of a post like this … 

Twitter                         2.8 hours

Facebook                     3.1 hours

YouTube                      7 hours

StumbleUpon              > 7 hours

Tumblr                        >7 hours 

These data points suggest a few testable media and messaging strategies either for optimizing digital engagement or integrating on and offline media and messaging. 

Road Block. Align and synchronize digital and TV platforms to dominate either a high or low use period with a single message. Gaming, apps and social media all have substantial traffic that overlaps TV prime time. Brands should leverage this confluence of platforms to maximize visibility and reach or to make a dramatic statement. Imagine a campaign that parses the messages across synchronized platforms in specific time frames so that consumers follow the message or collect the clues to solve a puzzle. 

Sequence. Run media to optimize efficient reach across platforms and to be sure a sustaining weight of media and messaging carries through a daypart or influences existing behavior at specific times of day. Imagine a sequence of messages that follow each other and tell a compelling brand story driving toward an offer across platforms through time. 

Contra-Competitive Timing. Coined by Dan Zarella, this strategy says zig when they zag. Don’t try to break into high volume traffic time periods. Insted buy fringe periods or slower periods to maximize reach and frequency against smaller but more carefully targeted or niche audiences. With all due respect to Zarella, this has been a TV buying strategy used with effect by insurgent brands for 50 years. 

Inflection Points. Intercept customers and prospects when and where they are doing something they like. Position your brand and buy your media to intersect and complement the experience. Better yet, enhance the TV or online experience and win loyalty and customer advocacy. This, too, is an old TV buyer’s trick – run soup ads when it rains, run the dinner special from 5-7p or promote beer during the game. 

We’ve just begun to scratch the surface in applying sophisticated media thinking and cross-platform integration to digital, social and mobile platforms. Timing and usage are variables that should help us break down the silos and leverage old and emerging wisdom about media and consumers to dramatically improve digital brand communications. 

 

5 Savvy Ways to Start a New Job

Congratulations you are starting a new job. You’ve got a new outfit, a new attitude and a new paycheck. Be sure you start smart and savvy by being conscious of your surroundings and by managing your expectations. It’s not easy being the new guy. 

You’re psyched. They’re psyched. But nobody knows what’s really coming next. You gilded the lily and radiated energy and intention in all those interviews. They did too. Everyone was on their best behavior. Now you’ll see them in their native habitat. 

Some will maintain the façade longer than others, but soon you’ll get a glimpse or a massive dose of reality. Nobody ever really knows what he or she is getting into until they are in-place, fully present with all political and emotional sensors on high alert. 

To insure you get off to a smart, savvy and successful start, focus on these 5 factors  

Expect Differences. No two organizations do things the same. You’ll see stuff that’s cool and stuff that’s nutty. Your IT and email set-up will be different. So will time sheets, reporting, status, phones, etc. Don’t be shocked. Take it all in. Maintain an even keel. Don’t make faces. Try to understand why they do it that way. If there’s no good reason, accept it. 

You are not going to change attitudes, processes or idiosyncrasies anytime soon. So suck it up. Decide that whatever they do and however they do it will be okay. Go with the flow. Don’t make demands or comparisons to your old job. Don’t be a Diva. Your new bosses and teammates want you to fit in. Don’t disappoint them by freaking out or by telling them how outdated, silly or counter-productive their act is. 

Get the Back Story. You’ve joined a sitcom in-progress. Find out what went on before you showed up and what people think will happen next. You got hired. But you don’t really know if they think you are the Messiah or if you were 3^rd choice. Disconnect your ego and find out as much about the context of your hiring as you can.

You might think you’re there to shake things up or to add some special measure of expertise. If you are the first new guy after a hiring freeze, expectations could be unrealistically high. You might be replacing either a super star or a screwball, either of which will prompt comparisons and early judgments.

Chances are somebody there thinks you’ve arrived to be their bitch and somebody else has already lined up all the stuff they hate to do as your first assignments. The more you understand the back story; the easier the transition. 

Smile & Keep Your Mouth Shut. Smile and be happy. You have a new job. But don’t pretend you’ve joined a love cult. People work out all kinds of needs at work. You can’t effectively negotiate the currents till you understand who’s who and where they are coming from. This requires considerable restraint. Everyone is curious about the new guy. Develop a simple story punctuated with some personal details and tell it. Then shut up, watch and listen. 

Identify who likes who, who has the real power or influence. Try to figure out the tribes and cliques around you. Don’t join any group till you really know who’s in it and how they operate. You’re like a new prisoner in the yard. Don’t join or annoy the Crips or the Bloods. 

Don’t speculate about what’s going on. Stifle the urge to dissect, psychoanalyze, explain or describe your new insights to your new colleagues since you’ll invariably be wrong and piss someone off. Do not become an office gossip. It’s the kiss of death. Talk to your roommate, your partner or even your Mom, but keep mum in the office until you feel confident you have the true lay of the land. Remember, new hires can be broomed in 90-120 without much cause, so don’t make enemies unnecessarily. 

Be Straight with Your Boss. Ask for clear directions, priorities and assignments. Ask the boss what success looks like. Get agreement on your personal KPIs and understand how your work will be evaluated. Be sure to get clear direction on deadlines, reports, statuses, and how much or how little to involve him or her in each of your projects. 

Some bosses are organized, self-aware and straightforward. Others aren’t. Some are very friendly. Some are distant. You’ll know right away which your boss is so calibrate your response and figure out how to give them what they want or what you think they want. Be straight but don’t suck up. Don’t be bashful. Ask and ask again. Act on their feedback. Establishing a good, clear and productive working relationship with your immediate supervisor will determine your near term career trajectory. 

Focus on Performance. You’re there to get something done. Make sure it gets done right. The fastest way to advance is to productively deliver work on time and on budget. Put all the other attractions and blandishments of the new job to the side. 

The landscape, the departments and the process will be new and probably different. Zero-in on learning them. Make allies in other departments. Figure out the formal process and the informal workarounds. Someone is counting on you to get on the scoreboard quickly. Deliver on those expectations. Figure out who can help you and who is just in the way. Find a Sherpa to guide you through the system. Play nice. Share. Document your work. Suspend judgment. Keep your eye on the prize. When you win; don’t brag. 

 

 

 

Optimizing Brand Posture on Facebook

It’s hard to imagine that there are people who use social media, without having a relationship with brands. Hard as it may seem, given the endless hype, social media is mostly about friends and not about brands. 

But the numbers are startling. 

• 3 in 5 Facebook users have not friended or liked a brand
• 78% of those who like brands, friend fewer than 10 brand pages
• Only 1% engage with brand pages
• Just 4% prefer to received brand promotions on Facebook
• 60% are annoyed by brand communication on Facebook
• 39% don’t think their “like” is an opt-in for marketing messages
• 1/3 of those who friend brands subsequently drop the friendship and the brand 

Jay Baer captured this idea when he wrote, “It’s not as if we signed up for social media sites so we could hang out with software companies and hotel chains and T-shirt vendors and ham merchants. We signed up to connect with each other, not with commerce.” According to Nielsen, consumers worldwide trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends above all other sources. 

Brands need to take this to heart when framing their social media posting strategies. Brands are like a friend-of-a-friend  -- not really invited but tolerated -- at a party where everybody already knows each other. The bottom line is, in Baer’s words, “If your company doesn’t have a social media editorial program that emphasizes spontaneous, personal, human, light-hearted, interesting, funny, timely and photo-driven content, you are swimming against a powerful tide of customer desire.”

 

Does Timeline Increase Engagement?

Now that Facebook has strong-armed everyone into the Timeline format, a skirmish has broken out over how much incremental engagement brands can expect. 

Introduced with claims that Timeline increased engagement for Toyota by 161 percent and Livestrong by 156%, expectations ran high. It turns out that this study covered only 15 brand pages over a 60-day period and covered Facebook’s beta partners, like Red Bull, Coca Cola, Walmart or Macy’s, who had strong existing brand social presence, and who switched over early and were highly publicized and hardly representative. 

When you dig into the hyperbolic work done by Simply Measured, you discover that response to status updates declined on Timeline while clicks to and views of pictures and videos went up. Increased size for visual assets easily accounts for the increased engagement activities. 

New data from Edgerank Checker based on an analysis of 3500 brand pages in the Timeline format found that sixty percent of the pages studied experienced a decrease in engagement. But since the majority of friends and fans visit the brand page just once and the real locus of engagement is on friend’s Newsfeeds, the real impact of Timeline on brand engagement is basically neutral. 

The bottom line is that the format change has little ort no impact on genuine engagement. The game still turns on brands’ ability to create useful and interesting content sufficient to overcome the Edgerank algorithm and gain access and response on friend’s newsfeeds.

 

8 Ways to Optimize Your Tweets

Twitter is an always-on constantly moving information-sharing device hosting over 230 million tweets a day and 400 million unique visitors in a month. Separating the signal from the noise on Twitter is a serious challenge. Similarly finding the right combination of 140 characters and links then timing your tweet to have any effect in the on-going conversation or to engage your followers is a shot in the dark.

The objective of tweeting is to attract followers who will interact and engage with your tweets. Re-tweeting, sharing, posting allied comments to expand and extend the conversation are the measures of success.

To optimize your tweets, try these eight tactics, inspired by Heidi Cohen.

1. Be a source. Add new, useful information. Share interesting links that you come across. Focus on topics where you are an expert or an interested student. Say something that hasn’t been said yet.
2. Be Funny. The Twitteratti love a good joke or a snarky, snappy sarcastic comment.
3. Take the miniskirt approach. Tweets should be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting. But readers need context to get your point. Don’t just tweet a URL. Add information that gives readers insights.
4. Use a strong headline. Motivate your audience to click through. If your tweet is complete on its own, readers won’t click on your link or do anything else. Your first 5 words should be teaser/headline copy.
5. Contribute to the conversation. Don’t just retweet. Add comments or a point of view. Phrase your tweets so that others will RT or comment. Feel free to rant, whine or bellyache.  Drama and strong emotion stimulate reactions, responses and re-tweets.
6. Skip yesterday’s news. Twitter is a global news ticker. It’s where news breaks. Be immediately relevant or be gone. Use hashtags to connect with the immediate topic.
7. Don’t disclose too much.. The news is enough of a downer. Avoid TMI. No one wants to know the intimate details of your life, tweeted moment by moment even if you’re a Kardashian. Keep personal messages personal. Use direct messages instead of public posts.
8. Avoid Twitter clutter. Be judicious with hashtags#, @ signs, RTs. They are meaningless jargon. Nobody thinks its cool any longer. It just obscures your message. Use hashtags to connect your message to on-going conversations or trending topics and @ signs for attribution or shout outs.

 

 

Target Content by Device

Armed with smartphones, tablets and laptop/desktop computers, consumers are beginning to use each device to do distinct tasks. And while e-mail, Internet access, search, Facebook, music, photos and gaming are widely used on all three screens, increasingly consumers are turning to specific tools to accomplish specific things. 

Smartphones are the all purpose in-motion utility device. The voice/text/audio recording tool replacing watches, alarm clocks, instant cameras, to-do lists, address books, PDAs, gameboys, calendars, weather 800 numbers and soon -- wallets. Tablets are becoming multi-dimensional infotainment centers. And personal computers, which are more likely than either phones or tablets to be shared devices, are serious tools for serious matters and the repository, or gateway to the cloud repository, of our key files and critical data. 

The division of labor seems to a function of technical capabilities, psychology, demographics and habits. People are used to doing certain things on the go, like texting, calling, checking e-mail, tweeting, etc. Shopping is a mixed bag. According to PriceGrabber, 1 percent of on online shoppers will buy exclusively using a mobile device and another 45 percent will combine offline, online and mobile to make a purchase.  And while the number of these tasks is expanding to include payments, ticketing or boarding passes and app use, we are, after all, creatures of habit where tradition and inertia plus ease of use drive many of our behaviors. 

107 million Americans, 46% of US adults own a smartphone. The average person glances at their phone 150 times at or every 6.5 minutes. Fifteen percent download mobile apps, 10% research products using their phone and 4% bought something with an average value of $80. Forty-eight percent use their phone to get coupons and 44 percent check product reviews. Forty percent use their phones while watching TV and two-thirds listen to music on their phones. Payments are the next new thing for smart phone users. 

The 54.8 million tablet users, 19 percent of US adults, account for 22 percent of Internet users and are generally concentrated among the better educated and higher earning segments, more than half of whom are millennials. Four times more tablet users access the Internet on their device than smart phone users and they spend 4.4 hours/week using their tablets accounting for 4 percent of online retail traffic. Seventy-two percent make weekly purchases averaging $123.00, about twice the time smartphone users spend shopping and twice the value of smart phone purchases. 

Tablets are becoming the preferred device for consuming long form content that requires longer attention spans. More than half of tablet users use apps, watch videos, read newspapers or magazines, read books or play games on their devices. More than half have paid for access to music, books, movies or TV shows. iPad users, the majority of tablet owners, spend 35 percent of their time surfing the web, 22% on social media, 12 percent each on playing games or watching videos. 

Desktops and laptops have perceptually merged in consumers’ minds. And while these computers introduced us to e-mail, web video, games, ecommerce and social media the portability, speed, and convenience of tablets are eclipsing the laptop. Yet consumers overwhelming see legacy devices as more secure and critical for storing information, It’s hard to imagine consumers filling out a mortgage, credit card or the common college application on a phone or a tablet. Similarly, even though tablet traffic to tax preparations sites is up 50 percent, most of us still do our taxes and our financial work on desktops or laptops. 

Savvy marketers will keep an eye on these behaviors and will create content, build messaging and promotions using native functionality built-into the devices in tandem with variables like day of week, time of day, GPS location and other factors to leverage existing device usage and provide consumers with an experience that will feel natural, organic, useful and fun.

 

3 UXD Factors Changing Strategic Planning

User experience design (UXD) is breaking out of its native digital niche becoming a critical element in marketing strategy. Understanding the full range of consumer experiences with a brand is a critical factor in building awareness, engagement and advocacy and in framing or evolving a value proposition that integrates and romances features and benefits in believable and sustaining ways. 

UXD is changing how brands approach strategic planning and how they develop customer insights. Once thought of exclusively as a digital concept, UXD promises to stitch together what consumers say with what consumers actually or habitually do to create insights that will suggest how messages are framed and where messages are transmitted and received. 

In apply UXD principles to integrated marketing programs, consider these 3 key factors. 

End-to-End Planning. It’s not just about the product or the transaction. People want to buy into brands not just buy stuff. You need a longitudinal perspective on the process. Anticipate and plan for information needs, feelings and functionalities at every step from the first glimmer of an idea in your prospect’s mind through the completion of a successful interaction and onto the next one. Every customer takes a journey to identify and interact with your brand. Map it. Think about it and carefully decide when, where and how you will have opportunities to shape the sequence, the messages, the offers, the incentives, the rewards, the confirmations and the back sell communications. 

Frictionless Interactions. The holy grail of UXD is to make every interaction simple, easy, intuitive and rewarding. It’s a very tall order, which requires alignment of all your resources to figure out where the likely hiccups might occur. Understand who your prospect is, what they are after and how they go about getting it. Then design your engagement mechanisms. 

Ethnographic research, rapid prototyping, task-oriented testing, in situ observation, eye-mapping and careful interviewing are the preferred UXD techniques which when married to focus groups, qualitative and quantitative research and customer data can deepen or supercharge a brand’s customer insights. The more you get into her head; the better. The more you understand her context; the better. The more you understand her workflow and her coping devices; the better. The more you anticipate where and how she’ll be hesitant, confused or doubtful; the better. 

Create Visual Cues. Too many brand experiences are like driving in New Jersey; under-marked and confusing. Develop plenty of visual cues to orient and direct prospects and customers. You can never reinforce where they are and where they are heading too much. Think of the customer journey like driving the interstate highway system. Anticipate where prospects will get antsy, where they need gentle reinforcement, where they need a big honking sign and when they need confirmation that they’ve gone in the right direction or made the right choice. 

The integration of UXD with traditional strategic planning will create a more accurate and powerful tool for brands to build deeper customer understanding, intimacy and loyalty.

 

You & Your Data

You've probably been hearing a lot about Big Data; huge databases accumulated by companies. The challenge is to make sense of that data in ways that personalize the experience for consumers and sell more stuff. 

The other faster moving data trend is collecting different sets of data, linking them and automating them to serve specific purposes. A huge number of start-ups are based on this premise. They use Facebook, as the database of choice because it’s rich (and getting richer each day) in personal information and because Facebook has made it easy and cheap for developers to get access to its data. 

Imagine a travel company that uses your Facebook info (posts, photos, apps, games) to figure out what kind of traveler you are. They know or can infer who you are, where you went, whom you went with and what you did there. Then they marry your info to a database of travel locations and deals and serve you up offers that match your style and your inferred budget. 

The richer the data sets; the richer the value to you and to them. The underlying assumption is that people will appreciate data mash-ups because it will yield more personal, relevant and valuable ways to enrich our lives expand our connections one to each other and make our money go further. At the moment this might seem, far-fetched. But when you realize that more than 25% of the population has always lived with the Internet and is very comfortable with living out loud, sharing their actions and ideas publicly and is quickly embracing the latest technology, you can begin to see the near-term future. 

The use of data is simultaneously creepy and useful. Studies have shown that the vast majority of Americans will trade off private data for utility or value. As data sets automatically talk to each other, this trade-off will be perceived as less scary and more useful. We’ll get used to being cued and prompted easily and quickly. 

A principle tool for data collection is your mobile phone.  You may not realize it but everything you do with your phone is stored and captured. It’s easy to figure out who you talk to or text, how often, from where and at what times. 

Your phone's GPS device records and potentially tracks or monitors your whereabouts and movements. The built-in accelerometer can imply what activities you do, the speed you do it and the likely impact. There are many apps with sensors that measure and record vital stats like blood pressure, heart rate, etc. All of these technologies reveal a great deal about you that could be used to personalize offers and enrich or personalize a brand experience. 

This is data arena is where technologists and entrepreneurs are playing today.  There will be some horrific privacy breaches and some amazing new gadgets that come out of this tension between privacy and technology.

 

 

Engagement is No Real Metric

“Engagement” is being proposed as the new metric for online and social media interactions. Although not uniformly defined, “engagement” seems to be an aggregate measure of a variety of interactions, which include clicks, likes, comments, shares, and re-posts. It’s a proxy for conversion in environments where goods and services aren’t directly sold. 

To the old school crowd, including yours truly, engagement is measured more discretely by counting the number of people who show up on a site, view a desired number of pages, spend significant time per page and per session, and take the desired action. These “engaged” visitors sign up for a newsletter, download something, use a calculator, enroll in a class or webinar, or maybe even buy something. 

Part of the debate centers on a definition and the use of the term relative to media values and media buying. If someone comes to your site or onto your Facebook page, are they engaged or not? If they spend a nanosecond to click “like” or view two pages or less, are you suffering from low engagement? 

In the old media world, we measured time-spent-viewing or time-spent-listening and inferred engagement from lapsed time. So if Nielsen clocked you listening to Z-100 for 45 minutes between 6a and 9a, we inferred that you liked that station, probably tracked with the core demographic, probably listened as much as the average dedicated listener, and probably paid some attention to its content and the ads. 

All media experiences are not equal and, therefore, have different outcomes. Engagement is a catchall concept designed to obscure rather than illuminate these differences in outcomes. 

The engagement debate is a step in the evolution of an elusive advertising rationale to support spending money on social networks where people come to do cool things, but brands haven’t figured out a way to quantify what they do, what it means, or how to justify incremental investments. Engagement will help social networks monetize their inventory but do little to help brands understand how they are interacting with customers or prospects.