In digital marketing, the term engagement refers to loyalty and fidelity bonds developed by a client towards a given brand, and, by extension, to the process of creating and nurturing these bonds.

The closest idea to this concept would be something like “marrying to a brand”. This means that the brand will be the first choice when it comes to consuming a service or a product, and also that there will be a close bond between the brand and its clients.

In the Inbound environment, it is said that a piece of content builds engagement precisely when it manages to create this sort of connections at a personal level.

We all have some type of business engagement

You probably have several favorite brands that have already earned your trust and become part of your lifestyle. Think of your shampoo, desodorant or toothpaste brand, your first choice when you need a new pair of sports shoes, or the beer you prefer to carry with you to any party with friends.

These are examples of engagement on major leagues, but they are useful to illustrate the concept –brands are titans and along the years they have successfully carved a niche into the minds of lots of people.

As if this wasn’t enough, they get reinforcement through permanent promotion campaigns –an opportunity to interact with their clients, feeling even closer to them, not just a cold entity but a friendly entity.  They show their concern, clients can feel identified.

We recommend: What is Branded Content?

Why is engagement so important?

The most important thing in a business is the client. It is important to make as many clients as possible but it is even more important to have them back. Having loyal clients allows you to keep a client database and also to attract new clients.

Think of the last time that you ever recommended a specific brand to somebody. You did so because you were satisfied with a product or service and you were confident that the other person would also enjoy it. Well, what you did is a sample of engagement in action.

What about engagement in social media?

The term “engagement” became popular with the Social Media Marketing boom, though it was not well applied. Many enthusiasts have used this word to refer to the number of reactions that users gave to their posts.

These reactions depend on each platform:

• Facebook: Like, Haha, Wow, Share and comments.
• Twitter: Retweets, Likes and answers.
• Instagram: Likes and comments.

In this case, engagement is seen as a rating – we compare the number of reactions of a post to the total number of followers.

For instance, if the page of “Papitas Chaps” which has 54,608 followers on Facebook, makes a post that gets 2,459 reactions, then its “engagement” is 4.5%.

Like this, engagement is supposed to serve as an indicator of popularity of a brand among its followers. However, only in a few cases this is translated into a real increase in sales and, consequently, in profits.

In spite of the fact that social networks are an excellent means for content to go viral, most people use them for entertainment purposes, so it is quite unlikely that a brand which usually uploads fun posts and generates conversation can make any profit out of that.

Besides, “engagement” results are usually subject to bias due to algorithms that show a feed to users in every social network as they connect. Then, although this is an indicator which might be useful, it’s not enough to make executive decisions in a digital marketing campaign.

This misconception of engagement led to the bad practices, such as the use of bots, buying followers or pages with followers. All of them are aimed at artificially swelling a brand’s popularity. As expected, most of them fail.

This article will be helpful: Learn the metrics that a freelance social media expert should analyze about your business.

Learn more about Engagement

Engagement is quite a new term and its real meaning is under discussion these days, as well as what it is for. Its definition is permanently evolving and it is worth learning more about it. For that reason, we’ve gathered this set of external resources:

• Three questions to ask to understand engagement better – By Content Insights
• Why Engagement doesn’t always lead to conversions – By The Daily Egg
• 13 Easy And Effective Customer Engagement Strategies – By Buildfire
• 4 Inbound Marketing Hacks to Boost Engagement and Conversions – By Business2Community
• 12 Methods To Increase Engagement And Conversion Rates– By Forbes
• How to measure Engagement the right way – By Content Marketing Institute
• The rules of engagement are changing with digital marketing – By Medium
• How to navigate engagement metrics: 3 mistakes to avoid & 3 future trends – By Flockler

Would you like to build more engagement with your clients?

At Workana you’ll find many freelancers widely experienced in marketing projects who can help you to build loyalty bonds between your clients and your brand, as well as to measure those bonds in a clear, effective way.

Find more tips in: How and where to find a freelance digital-marketing-expert for your enterprise

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