Anyone Else Sick of ‘Engagement’ Yet?

engagement in action

What does ‘engagement’ mean to you? The word used to mean bethrotal and would hopefully end in marriage. A prior engagment means you’re busy and we’ve all been engaged in a conversation, some of us even in battle. In Britain, your telephone line can be engaged – even your lavatory can be engaged. These types of enagement have been around for a long old time but the use of the word engagement has been hijacked by a very strong force…. Social media.

Any social media ‘guru’ will tell you that success online is only about one thing – engagement. Not sure how many blog posts I have read from ‘experts’ that outline a situation with a company which seems to be doing ok, they have a fancy social media presence but for some reason there is a lack of interaction with users. The ‘expert’ then comes up with the insightful advice of engaging with the community and everyone reading the post leaves a comment agreeing.

That was great back in 2009 but by now you would think any comms or PR person working with social media would understand to the need to communicate with people. Sometimes companies get this wrong but I think it has more to do with the corporate culture than anything else. If a company puts you on hold on the phone for 30 minutes, if they rarely respond to letters, you can probably expect their Twitter response time to be rather slow. Any advice on social media engagement is not going to change the behavior of this organisation overnight.

In case you haven’t noticed, we have all been so engaged nowadays online that even the multi-author blog Social Media Today has its own category for Engagement on their blog. I for one never felt tempted to check out that section – did you? Perhaps it’s just the term I’m sick of. It just feels very dated and like something everyone has to say instead of something innovative, creative or even original.

Are you engaged or disengaged? Let me know your thoughts….

Related: How NOT to Pitch Bloggers with Your Products and Services

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  • http://www.engaging-people.com/ Berniejmitchell

    What you need is a Big Fat Engagement Party! ;-)

    • http://linkhumans.com/ Jorgen Sundberg

      Indeed! Bernie you’re one of few people I think do engagement very well, others talk a good game but haven’t got a clue.

  • http://www.jojari.com/ Jojari Jobs

    This article was pretty engaging… :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/johnmurphy.focuspoint John Murphy

    Jorgen, I’m glad someone else hates the word engagement because I think it has become meaningless – something like “high net worth” and “vertical integration”. Why can’t we just say what we mean?

    • http://linkhumans.com/ Jorgen Sundberg

      I like your ‘non-linear’ thinking John :-)

  • http://twitter.com/Alconcalcia Alasdair D Murray

    My view is that people don’t want engagement over any period of time in the lame hope a job might result from them hanging around an online forum, they want a job opportunity now, not next week or next month or next year, now! The only engagement they seek is a job ad that engages their interest, appeals to their emotions and reaches out and matches their aspirations. Technology and talk about engagement has muddied the recruitment waters. It used to be a simple transaction – I have a job, you have the skills and experience I am looking for to do that job, let’s talk. Now all the talk is of which channels to use, ‘are job boards any good anymore?’, you need a personal brand mate! etc.
    No wonder jobseekers are confused! With the advancement of technology – the ability to post a job online in an instant and aggregate it to hundreds of different places, so has come a dumbing down in terms of creativity. A quick cut & paste of a job description onto Broadbean, press a button and hey presto! Except that the message so many recruiters are firing out there isn’t engaging. It’s simply going through the motions. You want to engage people? Write each recruitment communique you put out with the target audience in mind Appeal to their emotions, sell them the role in an honest and alluring way. That’s proper engagement, and that’s what the majority of jobseekers want.