This post isn’t quite about any “rules of engagement,” though I’m surprised I haven’t seen that title used to describe an articles about engagement marketing, since it is becoming a popular topic, especially in social media circles. Maybe a famous blogger or company will use it and (hopefully) credit me with thinking it up.
Anyway, I was reading a post by Amber Naslund today, entitled “10 Key Engagement Metrics.” She brings up several good indicators about engaging content, and here they are:
- Comments
- Unique commenters
- Thread size
- Time with content
- Content downloads
- Subscriptions
- Content sharing
- Suggestions/Feedback/Comments (does that count, wasn’t that #1?)
- Spinoff content
- Recommendations.
Pretty solid. In the opening of the post, she writes “[w]hile no single metric alone is going to be a solid indicator of how engaged your community or customers are….” I agree, but I think there is a big picture element that is worth emphasizing from the discussion (she did mention, but I felt could be more emphasized): virtually all of the metrics she articulates revolve around some form of interaction with the content (except maybe #4, but I think precisely’time with content’ is exactly where product simulations would fit as a means to deliver useful engagement metrics).
By having a big picture concept, it can not only help to tie seemingly disparate items together, but also help us evaluate a range of additional interactive activities that should lend themselves to being metrics of engagement (like the use of product simulations, but isn’t that an obvious comment coming from me?).