Look at me I’m Engaging!!!

One thing Social Media “gurus” are experts at is making up definitions for words that already have established meanings. I bet old Merriam & Webster are pretty pissed about this and rolling in their graves. Wait are they dead? Alive or deceased, it’s pretty ridiculous for people to think they can change the meaning of something just because the context is new or unique.  This is exactly the case with one of my favorite social media buzzwords “Engagement.” Yes, you could logically argue that in the 15th century, when the transitive verb first entered into colloquial speech, that it’s creators weren’t thinking, “gee we ought to put a clause in here for how this relates to internet marketing.”

No of course they didn’t. They couldn’t predict the future, and they were marveling over the recent discovery of my favorite portion of the food pyramid- chocolate. But I am not going to judge them because-hey-even though they didn’t throw us a media tailored definition,  the standard serves as enough to easily judge any type of social media related meaning we could throw at it. Look at the beauty of M&W’s fine work:

Engage: to hold the attention of: engross <her work engages her completely> b: to induce to participate <engaged the shy boy in conversation>

Now you could argue that anytime someone liked something a brand produced that they were technically “engaged” with the brand.  Let’s be blunt here- my specialty.  Do you walk around telling people, wow I am really engaged in those boots right there, I have to have them? No you don’t. Okay. Well.  I know you’re yelling at me in your head saying- “boots aren’t content, stupid!” I ask you this, when you read a blog, watch a youtube video, or listen to something on the internet how often would you feel comfortable using the word “engaged” to describe your experience? And further more how often do you share that content that you read, watched, ore heard that did not “engage” you? I would bet the family farm that it’s probably around 85% of the time.

Now I’ve heard & read time and time again that engagement is best measured in RTs, reblogs, shares & etc. I don’t agree.  RTs don’t show engagement. Why?

1. How many times do we retweet something solely because it has a good title? I’ll admit I’ve done it more times then I am willing to say. We ALL have. If anyone says they haven’t they’re a liar and -if you believe in some sort of god-he knows when you lie…

2.  A retweet doesn’t show any actual engagement with the content.  It just shows that you know how to copy & paste, or if you’re using more “advanced” means of tweeting, it means you know how to click a button. Clicking a button is not engagement, it’s showing you’re about as smart as the average monkey.

3. That said, even if you did read the content and like it and retweeted it for all the right reasons, did you really engage? Do we measure engaging with a TV commercial by how much people liked the content?  No, we don’t. There have been plenty of awesome & amazing commercials that have generated little engagement. I know several ad agencies that can tell you all about this.

This leads me to what I would like to call my REAL Social Media definition for engagement: (ta da)!

Engage: to hold the attention of: engross <her work engages her completely> b: to induce to participate <engaged the shy boy in conversation>

Duh. You should have seen that coming.

PS. if you want to “engage” with this content leave a comment, start a discussion, or etc.

PPS. If you don’t want to “engage” and just want to share this, please do. Even though it isn’t a good measure of engagement, it is a good measure of popularity.  Just like an insecure teenager, I don’t mind sitting at the cool table.