Marketers eagerly purse engagement. They believe engagement, generally defined as interactions with the brand on social media, can increase website traffic, awareness of the brand and inclination to purchase.
Some leading marketers question the widespread belief that engagement is an important social media metric.
Marketing consultant Mark Schaefer calls engagement a lousy metric. Schaefer says his blog has generated thousands of comments and hundreds of thousands of likes, tweets and mentions. Yet very few of those who comment on his blog or otherwise engage with his content on social media become customers. Most people who hire him for consulting or other work have never engaged with his content.
Engagement Does Not Equal Sales
Engagement doesn’t necessarily produce sales, he concludes. Engagement can provide feedback and validate your efforts, but it’s a mistake to pursue the metric without linking it to sales. It also has a downside, he adds. Responding to large numbers of comments can be time-consuming and costly.
Bloggers generally believe that fewer than 2 percent of a blog’s audience leave comments. Non-commenters represent the silent majority. Mathematically, it makes sense that people who don’t comment hire him, he says. Just because people don’t comment or otherwise engage doesn’t mean they not reading and appreciate the content.
The number of comments on his blog has plunged in recent years, even while page views have increased. More people read blogs with mobile devices, and leaving comments with those devices is difficult. Other bloggers, however, note that people are more likely to comment on social media.
With comments vanishing, Schaefer suggests content marketers turn to metrics such as returning visitors and average time on site to find if their audience appreciates their content.
The C-Suite Doesn’t Care About Engagement
Allen Plummer, content marketing and social media strategist at Vanguard, sees another problem with engagement: Corporate senior leaders don’t care about the metric. They care about ROI. To gain their support, it’s essential to link engagement to sales-oriented goals. Those goals can vary depending on the organization. They could be lead generation, repeat website visitors, calls or touchpoints with your sales force, or incoming calls to an 800 number.
Some say engagement has fallen out of favor as trolls, hyper-partisan comments, personal attacks and hate speech have come to dominate social media. Brands find that obtaining meaningful engagement has become more difficult and many are less willing to dedicate the staff.
“When was the last time you had an actual conversation with anybody on Twitter?” asks Arik C. Hanson, principal of ACH Communications, in his blog. “Heck, when was the last time ANYBODY has a productive conversation on Twitter?”
Engagement can also be an ambiguous metric. Its value varies depending on the network and type of engagement. Shares, which help spread the brand’s marketing and PR message, are most desirable. Likes are far less significant.
Bottom Line: Many marketers cite engagement as a top social media metric. That could be a mistake. The metric has definite disadvantages. Engagement doesn’t necessarily lead to more sales or indicate a lack of an interested audience. In addition, engagement that doesn’t impact sales is unlikely to impress upper management.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
