ORGANISATIONS NEED TO ENGAGE TO GROW
The Engagement Economy defines how organisations need to interact with their employees, customers and stakeholders
Today, social media has taken on an entirely new level of significance. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are no longer merely time wasting activities or excuses to endlessly browse the web. They have become centers of conversation and play a huge role in the success of consumer-focused enterprises.
In fact, businesses that don’t have a presence in social media do very poorly compared to their connected competition. This revolution in the way that businesses, their employees and their consumers interact has been dubbed ‘The Engagement Economy.’
Key Features of the Engagement Economy
There are three main features or aspects that embody the core values and principles of the engagement economy. They are emotion, involvement, and time. We’ll take a look at each of these in depth.
Emotion
In the engagement economy, emotion plays a particularly large role. Brands are connecting with consumers on a level that offer-based advertising completely fails to reach.
The business that provides a product at half the cost of its competition may capture attention in ads and banners, but without creating an emotional, human connection between the values of the brand and its customers, it won’t do half as well as the business that has all of that, yet charges twice as much for the same product. Value in the engagement economy is perceived value, and emotions play a large role.
Involvement
Perhaps the most obvious feature of the engagement economy is involvement. The name alone suggests that this has a large role to play. In the past, companies fought to capture the attention of consumers. How long they had that attention didn’t particularly matter, but as long as they had it for a moment that was enough.
This is no longer the case. Consumers want to play a much more active role in brands they have an emotional connection to – whether this means suggesting improvements or changes, or simply spreading the word to their family and friends – and businesses that fail to facilitate this kind of interaction will themselves fail.
Time
The final feature of the engagement economy is time. This is tied up with interaction, since time is necessary for interaction to take place. The difference here is that time has almost become a currency in and of itself.
Customers speak volumes simply by taking the time to like a Facebook page or tweet about a product to their friends. Not only have they actively engaged with the brand, but they’ve chosen to do so over the myriad of other things they could be doing on the internet.
How Can Businesses Create Engagement?
There is no perfect formula for creating engagement, but there are a number of ways that businesses can get their foot in the door. It will quickly become apparent which of these methods are worth pursuing and which should be abandoned, and these will differ from business to business. Here are just a few examples.
Pages and profiles in social networks are the most obvious, and arguably the most effective. Consumers can be included in decision making (trivial, perhaps, but engaging nonetheless) through contests and polls. Some brands have even gone so far as to set up shops in virtual worlds like second life.
No matter which route your business chooses to take, the important thing is that you don’t create a wall between yourself and the customer. In the engagement economy, businesses exist to serve the customer first and foremost – profits come after. If you treat the customer right and engage with them in a meaningful way, they will reward you. It’s become almost impossible for consumer-oriented businesses to succeed without engagement, so it’s really not an option, only a question of how.
