What Is Social Media Engagement?

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category, don’t worry–we won’t tell.

Instead, we want to make sure you’re fully knowledgeable


and comfortable with your next steps toward engaging with customers.

What is Social Media Engagement?

When you think about social media engagement, it’s smart to break it down into something
tangible, such as a long-term relationship. In this example, you can imagine a committed and
lengthy relationship takes dedication, readiness to adapt, the ability to think about the future and
ensure the other person involved is happy for years to come.

Engagement is not just a single interaction with one of your customers, but an open line of
communication over a period of time. While the term “customer relationship” may come to
mind, engagement is still slightly different and on its own level. When we think about social
media engagement, it’s about how you use networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to
create a great customer experience. You want to be there there for your patrons through the thick
and thin of it.Engagement can be defined and measured in many ways. In the simplest terms,
engagement is the interaction between people and brands on social networks. For example, on
Facebook, engagement includes likes, comments and shares Customer engagement is a business
communication connection between an external stakeholder (consumer) and an organization
(company or brand) through various channels of correspondence. This connection can be a
reaction, interaction, effect or overall customer experience, which takes place online and
offline. The term can also be used to define customer-to-customer correspondence regarding a
communication, product, service or brand. However, the latter dissemination originates from a
business-to-consumer interaction resonated at a subconscious level.

Online customer engagement is qualitatively different from offline engagement as the nature of
the customer’s interactions with a brand, company and other customers differ on the internet.
Discussion forums or blogs, for example, are spaces where people can communicate and
socialize in ways that cannot be replicated by any offline interactive medium. Online customer
engagement is a social phenomenon that became mainstream with the wide adoption of the
internet in the late 1990s, which has expanded the technical developments in broadband speed,
connectivity and social media. These factors enable customer behaviour to regularly engage in
online communities revolving, directly or indirectly, around product categories and other
consumption topics. This process leads to a customer’s positive engagement with the company or
offering, as well as the behaviors associated with different degrees of customer engagement.

Marketing practices aim to create, stimulate or influence customer behavior, which


places conversions into a more strategic context and is premised on the understanding that a
focus on maximizing conversions can, in some circumstances, decrease the likelihood of repeat
conversions. Although customer advocacy has always been a goal for marketers, the rise of
online user generated content has directly influenced levels of advocacy. Customer engagement
targets long-term interactions, encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy through word-of-
mouth. Although customer engagement marketing is consistent both online and offline, the
internet is the basis for marketing efforts.

Leveraging customer contributions is an important source of competitive advantage – whether


through advertising, user generated product reviews, customer service FAQs, forums where
consumers can socialize with one another or contribute to product development. In store, or
offline customer engagement is best leveraged by associates’ extensive brand and product
knowledge, and the digital access that supports it. Equipped with a tablet that also delivers store
and sales training, educated on-floor associates become brand ambassadors who can show
consumers high-definition product imagery and video to help cross-sell, up-sell, grow
relationships and foster loyalty. In its current form, internet is primarily a source of
communication, information and entertainment, but increasingly, it also acts as a vehicle for
commercial transactions. Since the explosion of the web as a business medium, one of its
primary uses has been for marketing. Soon, the web could become a critical distribution channel
for the majority of successful enterprises. One among them is marketing and spreading brand
communication through Social networking sites (Thompson, 2002)

Social networking websites are online communities of people who share interests and activities
or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. They typically provide a
variety of ways for users to interact, through chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file-
sharing, blogging and discussion groups. As World Wide Web grew in popularity, social
networking moved to web-based applications.
This next section provides a conceptual starting point in understanding how the critical activities
of engagement and response are enabled through the adoption of social technology and
supporting processes. Beware: It’s a different viewpoint than that which applies to “engagement”
in traditional media. Engagement is redefined by consumers when acting in an open,
participative social environment. This is a very different context than the “read-only” setting in
which traditional media defines “engagement,” so take the time here to understand the four
stages of engagement. Engagement on the Social Web means customers or stakeholders become
Portici - pants rather than viewers. It’s the difference between seeing a movie and participating in
a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

The difference is participation. Engagement, in a social business sense, means your customers
are willing to take their time and energy and talk to you—as well as about you—in conversation
and through processes that impact your business. They are willing to participate, and it is this
par- titivation that defines engagement in the context of the Social Web. The engagement process
is, therefore, fundamental to successful social marketing and to the establishment of successful
social business practices. Engagement in a social context implies that customers have taken a
personal interest in what you are bringing to the market. In an expanded sense, this applies to any
stakeholder and carries the same notion: A personal interest in your business outcome has been
stab- lashe.
LITERATURE REVIEW

In recent years, social networking sites and social media have increased in popularity, at a global
level. For instance, Facebook is said to have more than a billion active users (as of 2012) since
its beginning in 2004 (www.facebook.com). Social networking sites can be described as
networks of friends for social or professional interactions (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels, 2009).
Indeed, online social networks have profoundly changed the propagation of information by
making it incredibly easy to share and digest information on the internet (Akrimi & Khemakhem,
2012).

The unique aspects of social media and its immense popularity have revolutionized marketing
practices such as advertising and promotion (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). Social media
has also influenced consumer behavior from information acquisition to post-purchase behavior
such as dissatisfaction statements or behaviors (Mangold & Faulds, 2009) and patterns of
Internet usage (Ross et al., 2009; Laroche et al., 2012).

Social media is ‘‘a group of internet based applications that builds on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, and it allows the creation and exchange of user-generated
content’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.61). Social media has many advantages as it helps
connect businesses to consumers, develop relationships and foster those relationships in a timely
manner and at a low cost as Kaplan and Haenlein discovered (2010).

Other functions of social media involve affecting and influencing perceptions, attitudes and end
behavior (Williams & Cothrell, 2000), while bringing together different like-minded people
(Hagel & Armstrong, 1997).

In an online environment, Laroche (2012) pointed out that people like the idea of contributing,
creating, and joining communities to fulfill needs of belongingness, being socially connected and
recognized or simply enjoying interactions with other like-minded members. The much higher
level of efficiency of social media compared to other traditional communication channels
prompted industry leaders to state that companies must participate in Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, and others, in order to succeed in online environments (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010;
Laroche et.al. 2012). Thus, more industries try to benefit from social media as they can be used
to develop strategy, accept their roles in managing others’ strategy or follow others’ directions
(Williams & Williams, 2008).

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