I saw an engagment once…
October 10th, 2006Author: DialogueMedia
Michael Palmer at ANA Marketing Maestros is calling out Steve Rubel over his assertion that “engagement,” an ill-defined and illusive beast, is a “myth.” Rubel says true engagement is something that comes about after marketers cede power to the audience. The only actions by a marketing team should be, Steve says, to create the tools for customer evangelists to spread the word and then the monitoring and measuring of how they’re doing so. It seems to me Steve has the same view of marketing as those who believe in the “clockmaker” version of God, one who set the world in motion and is now detached from the day to day goings-on.
But what neither Palmer nor Rubel talk about is the squishy middle that exists between “creating the right programs” and “measuring the results.” That’s an important omission since that’s where the possibility for true engagement lies.
Let me use an example. If I want to write about a new marketing campaign on my blog I would be thrilled to have available to me a set of tools such as embeddable video, high quality graphics and detailed product information which I could use and link to. That’s the first step a company could take. Monitoring is the second and involves marketers needing to know how to use the tools available to them to most effectively do so. But the next step is not measurement and evaluation. That next step is where engagement comes into play.
Engagement to me means when a company or marketer reaches out to the participants of the conversation and gives them a pat on the back, follows up with more information or updates, writes in to correct something that’s wrong or otherwise makes themselves available as a resource. There’s very little that gets me more excited than getting contacted by someone I’ve written about. That shows me they’re monitoring and want to engage in a dialogue. Building those relationships is beneficial to everyone since the company can be more certain of an accurate message being communicated and the writer gets a whole new stream of good information to draw from.
I don’t know how many companies are doing that but I suspect it’s not nearly as many as should be. But it’s the most important step in engaging with the audience and one that turns the ephemeral engagement beast into something tangible. Monitoring and evaluation then can show points of contact can highlight the affect those contacts had, something that is important for any marketing team to be able to show.
Related Posts
Tags: New PR
