A little engagement goes a long way
Hold up! I am not writing about a diamond ring. Although a little diamond does go a long way. I am writing about user engagement in the digital space. By engagement I mean a user base that is active, not passive.
Let’s pretend you have 50,000 visitors to your website per month. While they are visiting your website (which in and of itself can be considered an important goal) how many of those visitors are engaged? I mean actively engaged. How many are liking, commenting, reading your blog, sharing, requesting information or gosh, even buying?
While total visits, unique visitors and time on site are important stats, engagement is the real leader to buying. Take the pure social realm; what does 10,000 followers on Twitter really mean? What do “Likes” on Facebook really mean?
Recently, members of the Ninth Store team set up a Facebook page for a non-profit: the Alpine Club of Canada Saskatchewan Section. We promoted the Banff Film Festival World Tour stop in Saskatoon.
This is the engagement we received:
So what do 134 “Likes” mean? Reach or engaged users? People talking about this? Let’s review the definitions:
Like: # of unique users that “Like” your page
Reach: # of unique users that have seen your post
Engaged users: # of unique users that clicked on your post
Talking About This: # of unique users that have created a story with your post: Like, share, comment
For this promotion 68,567 unique users saw a post, 287 clicked or were engaged, 134 “Liked” the page and 34 talked about it.
In 2011, the BFF in Saskatoon had around 1000 people through the doors. This year a little more than 1200 showed up on the coldest night of the year, equalling a 20% increase in attendance. Consider that the promotion was the same as the previous year, except there was no social media. Did this social presence make a difference? Did the 287 engaged users equal the 20% increase?
I believe we had enough engaged users that converted into real world action (buying tickets), which caused the increase in attendance. What do you think?
Steve Whittington is President of Roadmap Agency Inc. He has also served for over a decade as a member of the Executive Team of Flaman Group of Companies an award-winning organization and has over 25 years of executive experience. Steve’s current board work includes serving as; President of Glenora Child Care Society; and Co-Chair of the Marketing Program Advisory Committee for NAIT’s JR Shaw School of Business. Previous notable board work included, Chair of the board for Flaman Fitness Canada, a national retailer, a Director for a meal prep internet Startup Mealife and Chair of Lethbridge Housing authority, the third-largest Social housing NGO in Alberta.
Academically, Steve was an instructor of Project Management at Lethbridge College for seven years. Steve holds a Bachelor of Commerce Honours degree; he is a Certified Sales Professional (CSP), Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Marketing Specialist (CMS) and (CCXP) Certified Customer Experience Professional.
Steve’s first book Thriving in the Customer Age – 8 Key Metrics to Transform your Business Results teaches about the customer journey and provides a guiding framework spanning all stages of the customer experience. The book explains how every metric impacts an organization and how leaders can best utilize each metric to provide a stellar customer experience. Everyone knows the customer is the most important part of a business. This book provides the tools to improve an organization’s customer experience and drastically transform business results.
Recently Steve’s Blog has been profiled as one of the Top 75 Customer Experience blogs
Topic: Blogs, Facebook, Likes, Non Profits, Social Media, User Engagement