Engagement … the biggest ‘buzz’ word for social media. We are no longer marketing to our consumers but engaging with them. So what is engagement? Some think that the amount of ‘likes’ on a page or picture is a reflection of engagement. And this is what many digital marketing companies lead their clients to believe. But ‘likes’ are easy to get with a broad advertising campaign. On Facebook, you can run a sponsored post to a broad spectrum of people (say parameters of adult between the ages 20 and 65 who enjoy food) and get thousands of likes. Great right? You can do the same with Instagram and Twitter adding popular hashtags like #tbt, #life, #quoteoftheday, #likeforlike. You will be flooded by likes and followers, but who is @sally1234? (hint: most likely a spammer).
There are 2 main reasons why the race for ‘likes’ is not the best way to gain engagement. The most obvious reason is that these people are not, and can never be your customers (unless you are a multi-national, highly recognised brand, even then it’s no guarantee). If your only parameters are that the customer has to be breathing, then you will most likely be gaining likes from people (and computer generated people) from around the world with a broad list of likes, preferences, styles, tastes. Say you own a medium sized pizzeria in downtown Dubai that specialises in thin-crust pizza. Your delivery man can hardly get to The Marina let alone Abu Dhabi and the rest of the world. Or you have a handmade jewellery company specialising in Arabic designs. A Singaporean teenager may appreciate the designs and like the page, but with shipping charges through the roof they are not your target market. But you think its cool to have thousands of likes on your pages and pictures – right?
This brings us to reason number 2, now that you have thousands of people on your list you have diluted your interested followers. In Instagram and Twitter, this means you get a lot of spammy messages and one word comments instead of a flow of engagement where your customers are talking to you and each other. In FB this is the most damaging because now posts reach less than 5% of your followers. And if 90% of your followers are uninterested or unable to buy your product, think of how many ‘real’ customers actually see your post or advertisement (hint: very few!!!).
At Socialee Media we discourage clients that want or have too many likes on their social media (especially if it has been quickly paid for over a few months). It’s a lose / lose situation where we charge the clients to build and establish their social media platforms, create great content for them – and the reach is to uninterested followers. If we are lucky enough to start with fresh or inactive platforms, we grow the following organically – with specifically targeted advertisements to smaller demographic groups. We also look to engage with companies that fall into a similar category as the client in terms of product, service, ethics and customer. The numbers will grow because of the original targeted content and comments and engagement is easier to achieve because interested people are watching your space. If we are given platforms that a too saturated with followers we do a similar program of social media and digital marketing campaigns, with targeted advertisements BUT we know the process will take longer to weed out the uninterested crowd. People will naturally unlike the page when posts are targeted – because even the most avid page ‘liker’ on FB will get irritated by pictures of pizza from Dubai when they live half way around the world – but remember this is a good thing because if they aren’t interested, won’t be a customer and are not an ambassador, why on earth would you want them on your platforms??
The best advise we have for anyone attempting to use social media as a marketing channel, (which you should be) is to have a supporting digital strategy and plan so that you do not get caught up in the race for ‘likes’. There should be a more comprehensive approach for you to invest any time or budget in social media. In our opinion, a healthy social media platform is built on interested followers that engage in conversation that lead to sales, awareness and brand loyalty/ambassadors. ‘Likes’ have a place in creating perception, they are an ego trip, and they are most certainly not the be all and end all of your social presence. Social channels are traffic driving channels, creating your community on any of these channels and platforms is definitely a big part of your digital activity, but then what……….?