Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Re-thinking Engagement

A recent article in Ragan.com, "Are we killing them with engagement?” got me thinking about the approach PR professionals take when engaging with those using social media. Which leads me to share this new fact: Facebook users are beginning to "un-like" business pages.

I have been told by multiple professors and PR professionals that engaging and initiating conversation with your organizations publics is essential in developing and maintaining relationships. Well, there might be a problem with that, most people are not willing to talk or engage with the organization or its representatives.

People or public's want to engage in things that interest them, friends and hobbies. Being asked to give your opinion about a product or brand or even answering a question posed by the organization just clogs up their news feed. In turn, we are seeing resentment toward the organization or brand.

So, we need a new plan, a more "customer-centric" approach. A better approach would be specifically identifying needs and addressing them accordingly, going from general to specific, and individually targeting certain people based on their particular needs. This can and should go so far as writing on their Facebook page, personal blog, or mentioning them on Twitter.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I personally appreciate the twitter mentions much more because I have been avoiding facebook due to the recent ad overload. It also doesn't help that most people on my time line are suddenly self professed professionals and want to create pages to promote themselves.

I am definitely a twitter kind of girl now. Much easier, quicker, convenient and there is a limitation as to what you can post. (Although there are options to get past that, people rarely go over the max.)