Likeability & Engagement

Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY!

It’s a funny thing, concocting content for Social Media to achieve true engagement.  I notice on a daily basis, business and marketing types ripping the soul out of what Social Media can really be.

 Given the opportunity to create lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with your target public, why would anyone take archaic, ineffective marketing strategies and force them into other channels expecting different results? (insert definition of insanity here.) Answer: MONEY. It seems every conversation we have about Social Media turns to ROI within the first few minutes.

  It’s true that Social Media creates an amazing platform to communicate with a very targeted audience of new and existing customers, but.. (there is a big BUT here), we need people to realize social media is a vehicle not a destination.  It is NOT a campaign.  We know that only 18% of advertising campaigns deliver a positive ROI, so how will another channel deliver different results?

It makes perfect sense to have goals and objectives for social media that drive business such as; awareness, interest, customer retention or service or loyalty, but it’s your execution that is most important. You can’t take all of the principles that you learned in business/marketing school and apply it to Social Media.

Your first objective should be to become “likeable.”  This may sound obvious, but trust me it’s not. People can’t seem to resist trying to sell, promote and make MONEY.  When you make Social Media all about “me,me,me,me” you become very “un-likable.”

Sometimes when I listen to business/marketing types it’s almost as if they forgot that business is about relationships, and that people do business with people. Always have, always will. Relationships do not happen overnight, they are developed over time. There are many strategic ways to use Social Media, and its content, to create lasting relationships.

After ROI the conversation often turns to the number of “likes or “followers” a company has. The reach of your direct network is not the primary concern or real objective, it’s your engagement of your networks network, and their friends and followers that we are trying to reach.

We know that 80% of people trust peer endorsements, and that is exactly what content engagement is, or at least perceived to be. We need to focus content strategies on creating personality, humanizing the company, thought leadership and community. Strong content leads to strong engagement, over time that will bring the sales/clients/referrals and of course the MONEY. Please don’t have MONEY be your primary goal.  If you need help with your content strategy let us know, we are happy to help. 


Written by Ryan Cruise, CEO of Cruise Media Group