Driving engagement

Image via CrunchBase

A recent statistic from the Institute for Marketing Science in Australia provided sobering news for Facebook marketeers there. Only a half of one percent of the fans of 200 top corporations assessed "talked about" the brand. "Talked about" was the Facebook metric for posting, liking, sharing, tagging, commenting.

The experience elicited the usual advice to increase engagement. It should be noted that most users of the underlying products or services happily continued using them.

As well as that it is likely that only a small number of customers will ever engage with a business or brand and that these may be early adopters, high impact individuals and leaders. However proof of such contentions is not available.

What is clear is that social media will provide a deep way to engage with customers. The greater the engagement the likelihood is the greater the brand loyalty.

Engagement strategies can use 5 entertainment industry engagement drivers to drive up engagement; fun, a story, sensory delight, a cause, or a pay off. If brands master one or more of these they will get people talking about their brand.

In my book on social media, Social Media is Dynamite, I explore these options in more depth.