Engagement shouldn’t always be the main goal with social media

Engagement. This word is so overused in regards to social media. By now, I’m sure you have heard and seen articles, blog posts, tweets, and comments that a successful social media strategy is all about engaging with your target audience and not about hard selling. I’ve heard it a million times before and starting to get sick of seeing it. Even though it’s true that social media shouldn’t be used for hard selling, it should be used to strengthen your current marketing campaigns and can add a huge amount of value when integrated into your business processes.

Engagement on the social web isn’t everything, but it’s still important. Do people really go on their favourite social media channel just to engage with others and have a good time? They might be if they are connecting with friends and family on Facebook or part of a group discussion on LinkedIn. In that case, engagement works wonders, but do people really want to engage with brands all the time when they are visiting their favourite social media channel? This might seem like a barrier to many that are advertising on Facebook and it is. How do you get your audience to notice you when you are practically invading their space when they are in a different mindset?

It’s getting harder by the day to get the attention of the people you are marketing to. People have adopted the means to ignore marketing content. The same applies with traditional advertising such as TV ads. With on demand video and PVR decoders, you can skip pesky advertisements and only watch what you want to watch. You don’t have to sit through all the advertising going on while watching television.

To get your target audience to notice you via social media and to keep their attention is more about creating an awesome user experience which invites new people in and keeping them interested than engagement. How can you keep them interested so that you can accomplish your business and marketing goals? These are some of my digital goals:

Social media goals

1. Contact me directly
2. Share my content
3. Newsletter registrations
4. Purchase a service
5. Leave a comment

These goals are quite different depending on which website the visitor is on. It will also be different for your target audience, but the rules are the same. Always focus on goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, time-bound, and realistic (SMART).

To enhance the whole digital user experience for your target audience, put processes in place to make this possible. It’s important that the team in charge with your social media campaign can start the campaign and the support staff is in a position to support the message being communicated. When you use social media within your business, you create much more engagement and fun with an experience. You create a good experience that will excite people to be part of it because everyone can see the results. Afterall, you are all part of the campaign.
Are you focusing on the whole experience with your social media marketing strategy or just engagement?