What does social media ‘engagement’ even mean?

If I told you to imagine a world without social media comments, how would you feel? Scratch that. How many of you even remember a world before social media? Seriously, I find it hard. Social media was fun and games until it became serious business. That’s because the much-loved phenomenon ‘engagement’ came around and shaped the game.  

You know the drill nowadays; everyone wants a social media engagement strategy - which usually has more like, comments and shares somewhere inside it. But, engagement means different things to us all and some brands value some stats over others. So, is there a standard meaning at all?  

 If we consider that, at the heart of it, engaging consumers and followers on social media is about actual, meaningful interactions instead of an overbearing numbers game, then we’re onto something useful. If you need a hand with creating meaningful posts for higher engagement, then look no further.

 Conversations to ROI 

Before it all got real, businesses had to make ‘friends’ with people and post their content as if they were human. It was rather cute. For us in the business for that long, case studies from that era of social media marketing showcase the core idea of engagement. 

This became a time of conversations. People genuinely liked to see your posts and hear your opinion because they gave you permission to be on their Facebook newsfeed.  

 Of course, they still do when they ‘like’ your page, but it all got skewed and competitive when platforms like Facebook started drawing boundaries and eventually developed an algorithmic ad revenue model around it.  

And then CEOs and MDs only spoke in one language: a million Twitter and followers. Five million Facebook fans (as they were back then). More likes. More retweets. It was endless. But soon enough we realised how dangerous numbers can be. And since, rightfully so, all of us have questioned what engagement means.  

Don’t get me wrong, numbers are important too. They bring us reach and a rough idea of eyeballs to your page (impressions). If the audience is engaged, more people will see and hopefully interact with your posts. This is all fine and works well - in principle. 

Quality over quantity  

However, looking beyond the numbers is the real deal. Followers, no matter how many, will want to hear from you. So, what should you be thinking about? Well, firstly, your followers should welcome a post you make. It should not feel forced. Only then can engagement go beyond number of likes or comments. We need to dig deeper and study the quality of these comments.  

With that comes tough love. Sentiment is laborious and there are tools to track it, but even they only work so well. It can be taxing to dissect and study engagement at such a deep level. So why do it?  

Social media engagement has the power to give us a real insight on what kind of content works with your followers. What kind of posts get the most comments? Why is that the case? A deeper look into the posts that are being engaged with the most will start to reveal clues. 

More importantly, what is the nature of these comments? Are people blindly agreeing with your stance or can you see healthy discussion going on? Are you open to criticism and how do you handle negative comments? Are your Twitter responses to people’s complaints standardised or do people get human, empathetic responses from you?  

It really is the quality of our response to what your audience says where the term ‘engagement’ truly shines. 

People need to get value from your content and interactions. People should feel pleased to hear from you. You should see your followers as people who are interested in having a chat with you or ones that are in need of a problem being solved, or happy to look to you for a solution.

So, you see, engagement is a fuzzy, much-bastardised word that needs to be linked to the value of your business.  

If you’re to be on social media for your brand or business, ensure it offers value to people who want to be social with you. If they see your post, they should not like it because they are in for a voucher, but because they definitely, genuinely do appreciate what you bring for them. With every useful interaction on social media you will bring value to your business.   

It’s completely acceptable to be excited by the high numbers that comprise your engagement, but do try to see the inherent value in keeping your sentiment mostly positive and your consumers happy. Because without them, your business is essentially nothing.