In my last post, I discussed the Lurker community and how they are an important, often large majority, aspect of any community. During that post I also talked about a couple of different types of engagement that you can have with your members. I did not mean to gloss over that point, as it is an important factor to define so that you can measure success.
Just as Social Media means different things to different people, engagement also means different things to different people. Social Media could be something as simple as incorporating a “Share this” widget on your website, encouraging your audience to share pieces of content and webpages with their communities on Facebook and Twitter or on external social bookmarking websites such as Digg and Reddit. It can also include Ratings and reviews of content, providing “Social Proof” to your audience. It can also extend all the way to creating a “Faecbook-like” social network within your website to engage with your audience on a more personal level, and target content to specific individuals.
Engagement can also take a number of different forms. Are you looking at encouraging your audience to click on a link within an email that drives them back to your site? Are you looking to get them to register on your site? Do you have corporate blogs and do you allow for commenting on those blogs? Does your website include discussion forums where your audience can start discussions and comment on them? Are you allowing your audience to form “groups” and have topical discussions within a more private setting?
Up-front research into your audience and leveraging the appropriate tools are an important aspect of any Social Media or online community initiative. Defining what Social Media means to your business is the next step so that everyone is on the same page, and as an extension of that, making sure that you define what engagement means to you is the next key. So what does engagement mean to you?
