I participated in the “Socializing My Business – What Comes After the Chit Chat” Social Media Hashtag Conference a few weeks ago. Lots of great conversation from the likes of Jason Breed, Marc Meyer, Frank Eliason and more. Most of the conversation centered around the approach companies, new to social media, should take as they enter the space and seek to engage their audience/customer.

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Most of the participants agreed that you must first listen to the conversation occurring in the social space and develop an understanding of the topics your audience generates between themselves, before diving in to the social media pool. I agree wholeheartedly. You must first understand the context of a conversation before you can add anything relevant.

Relevancy is a foundation essential to meaningful customer engagement.

What is engagement? Merriam-Webster defines the term “engage” in several ways but, two particular definitions struck me:

1. To hold the attention of
2. To pledge oneself

Interesting, no? “To hold the attention of” and “to pledge oneself”. I think when discussing “engagement” as something companies seek with their customers, it’s important for companies to remember that in order “to hold the attention of” a customer, a company must offer something of itself. It must make a pledge to that customer.

The pledge isn’t something stated, rather it is implicit in fact that a customer is allowing the interaction to unfold and is willing to participate in it.

What is it that a company must pledge? You guessed it — relevancy.

Customers today are cautiously optimistic when it comes to social media interactions with brands. The skeptical side of customers is fed by a recent personal history of being shouted at or wading through the dark and often, uncharted waters of automated, telephone-based customer service interfaces. That slightly cynical side was born during untold hours of listening to on-hold music, praying that the next person that they’re routed to will take a personal interest in their plight and actively try to help rather than passing them on to the next, impersonal, uninterested customer service drone. And yet, customers are willing to give companies another chance.

That chance comes at a price. And that price is a pledge. Companies must pledge that this time, when a customer reaches out to them or when they proactively reach out to a customer, the company will provide information and an interaction that is valuable (relevant) to the specific needs (context) of that customer, at that moment.

A customer’s cautious optimism and that implicit pledge is what makes social media engagement so valuable to a company. To protect the value of engagement, we must all fight for the integrity of that implicit pledge. Companies should vow to listen first, understand the context of the conversation and only then, reach out with relevant and valuable information.

What other “look before you leap” guidelines should companies be mindful of when attempting to enter the social media space?

Photo by Art Of The State

Tags: Social Media ROI

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 10:52 AM by MattC and is filed under Social Media ROI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.