Social Media Marketing

 

What is Engagement?

Good question, many people look at the number of likes and shares a post gets on Facebook for example, they see loads of likes and a goodly number of shares and feel complacent that their social media is doing well.

For just a moment, think like a search engine mathematical algorithm. You’ve been given values to assign to different signals, those values added together create a hierarchy of weight for want of a better term. The heavier (or higher) the value, the more important the signal is. Seems simple doesn’t it? But the value can be used for both positive and negative signals. So a high (heavy) value on a negative signal is a very bad thing, while a high (heavy) value on a positive thing is a good thing.

So how much engagement does it take to click a like or share button? How much effort does it take, how much thought? Now think about a comment, not only do you have to click, just as you would to like or share, you have to think about what you’re going to say and you have to type it.

As a mathematical algorithm which do you think would have the most ‘weight’?

Because likes and shares can be manipulated more easily and, because the psychology of likes and shares are different they are of less value than a comment. Naturally that doesn’t mean you don’t want likes and shares, if that’s all you’re getting that’s better than nothing.

Comments are what you get when you post something that really engages people, gets them thinking and, gets them involved. It’s often said that images are the best things to post because they get shared most and that is true but, just getting things shared in a mindless manner does nothing to get you more business, does nothing to build trust, does nothing to promote you as an authority.

You need to stand out from the crowd, you need to offer content that will establish your authority in your field, build trust with potential customers and provide existing customers with such a great experience that they become willing evangelists for you and your brand.

Next time you look at your Facebook stats, ask yourself if what you’re seeing really does indicate you’ve got real engagement or whether it’s just the automatic reaction that people have when they see lots of likes and shares. They copy what others have done regardless of the content.