Are you Engaging?
No matter the type of business you have, local, internet, offline, online – your success or failure depends upon your ability to engage prospects.
There’s a fine line between engaging and simply being noisy.
So what is the difference and where is the line?
Of course when we think about engaging prospects and clients we immediately think of social media because we use the word engage so much when trying to teach people how to use it. But social media isn’t the only way to engage. We engage with every communication we have with our potential customers either offline or online. It can be a mailed newsletter or a digital one, a Tweet or a Facebook post, or sharing on Google+. It can be how the phone is answered or how a new connection is made.
Everything we do verbal or non-verbal is a form of engagement.
What does it mean then, to engage?
- It means repetition but not so repetitive that you wear someone out.
- It means sharing but not so much that you scare folks off.
- It means responding but not pushing.
- It means reciprocation but not without authenticity.
- It means using different methods for different customers but not
cross-pollinating for ease. - It means conversation not speaking at or to the customer.
- It means be helpful, answer questions but don’t require anything
in return.
Where’s the line?
When is sharing too much? When is responding pushy, etc.? The line falls before you hit the top of the bell curve; at the point where you
feel you might have done just a little bit too little. You know where the line is because we’ve all crossed it. Agreed someof us may not actually be aware that they’ve crossed the line and that’s a recipe for disaster.
But BRT readers understand the line.
I like to think of it as that point where you’ve still left a little mystery in the tank, where you’ve got people wanting more, waiting for the next installment. If they don’t feel that, you may have crossed the line.
The A-Lister
In the blogging world, the A-Lister is the guy who has a huge following, he’s a blogging celebrity, he has “fans”. The problem with “fans” is that they tend to never see your flaws. No matter how many times they blog in one day or tweet; no matter how many Google+ updates and Facebook updates they do the fans set out to share and share and share. So it must all be good then, right? The A-Lister must be doing something right then, right?
Nope. In fact some A-Listers have become so noisy that no matter how relevant what they have to say is, it’s too much, too constant, too engaging. The reality is we are still business owners who need to run businesses, not sit on social media reading everything. The same applies to your customer who still has a life and may not want it filled with just you all day long.
Noise
I remember following a popular social media guru on Facebook who updated so often I couldn’t ever see what my friends, family and
collegues were up to. So I dropped her. And that’s what happens when you begin to create too much noise. “Too much” depends upon knowing your audience, understanding where they are coming from and what they need. But here are some rules:
- More than one mailed item a week might be too much.
- More than 6 tweets an hour might be too much.
- More than 2-3 emails a week might be too much.
- More than 4 tweets covering the same information might be too much.
- Sharing the same tweets and updates on all platforms… definitely
too much.
The Engagement Rules
The reality is… there are no hard and fast rules. How you engage, when you engage, the number of times you engage – it’s all up to your audience.
The important thing is to learn about what works for your audience, what doesn’t and to listen.
If all you are doing is speaking to or talking to your audience you won’t know when too much is, well, too much. Your customers/clients will tell you when you’ve become too noisy but by then it is usually too late resulting in lost clients. Pay attention, watch what others are doing, and evaluate to make sure it will work for you.
What are your best engagement tips? Please share them in the comments!
This is a guest post by Yolanda A. Facio of Red.Hot.Momentum. Yolanda helps small businesses find clarity and the momentum to start, grow and manage their companies. Sign up for the free Red.Hot.Motivator e-Newsletter and get Red.Hot!
This got me thinking about relationship to who you want your audience to be.
If you are speaking to people who are feeling lost and spend a lot of time surfing the internet for answers, it might be appropriate to fill the airways with random messages.
If you cater to a business audience who need to cut through all the fluff and get to solid tidbits fast, it’s a whole different kind of presence.
The other thing I thought about when I looked at your illustration is no matter where you fall on the arc of the curve, you may lose those out on the tips of the points…. and that’s ok, and just part of it.
Yolanda Reply:
July 8th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
Yes, you can’t be for everyone. It can be stressful thinking that if you had one more tweet scheduled in a few more people would see it… but are they, in fact, the right people.
And what you share on what platforms matters as well. For me Facebook is about my friends and family and I don’t post any business related stuff there. As well, non-family and friends who want to be friends who post only business related stuff get filtered out so that I don’t have to see the noise.
There are lots of lines….
Yolanda,
YOu hit the nail on the head with the amounts of engagement. I have found a couple of people who I LIKE to have on my Twitter, facebook etc. But who just create SO much noise they drown out everyone else.
I know exactly what you mean!
There is certainly a sweet spot and I think your number you give for “noise” nails it down pretty well.
Actually more than 3 tweets an hour seems “too much” to me. But besides that your numbers seem perfect.
-Steve
Yolanda Reply:
July 8th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
LOL well my “numbers” are based on my preferences and yours will and should be different.
Same for your customers they may want more or less.
That’s why listening is so important and intuition. Sometimes I think we just need to spend a little time actually thinking about the effect our noise has on our audience.
I suspect there’s no perfect, but also suspect we can all do a better job!
Thanks for stopping by Steve, always glad to have your thoughts!
Alex Aguilar Reply:
July 9th, 2011 at 9:57 am
Three tweets a day seems to be my sweet spot. It hits the right balance between keeping my customers informed without overwhelming their feed. I also update my blog, Facebook and take part in my blog’s comments so I like to think I’m engaging with my clients on a variety of levels.
Yolanda Reply:
July 10th, 2011 at 12:11 am
Thanks for sharing your practices Alex. It’s helpful for others to see that it’s a recipe not an exact science!
Engaging with my prospects (and clients) online has been on my mind a lot lately. Thanks for this post…it came at just the right time. I’m still looking for the sweet spot in terms of conversations. It looks like (from the research I’ve done recently) that only a very small percentage of folks ever actually engage with a comment/post online. For instance, on Fan pages, it’s something like less than 1% of your fans will ever interact with a post. Even with the most engaging A-Listers out there, the number of people who comment or reply Tweet are miniscule in comparison to the number of people following them. This is scary stuff. Is it all a numbers game? Do I have to have thousands of followers before I start to feel like I’m not talking to myself? I’ve always thought it was quality over quantity, but now I’m starting to wonder…
By the way, I’d like to include your post in a blog carnival I’m holding in a few weeks on how to engage with your prospects online. It’s perfect for my topic. Would you be willing to participate?
Great post Yolanda.
I think finding the balance is the NUMBER 1 problem that needs to be tackled by all online persons. It is the nature of this industry that we engage but certainly finding what is working and what is distracting is the hard part. I’ve been in this for nearly 18 months now and I STILL struggle to find the balance!
Matthew – I noticed the consultation image I sent is not clear – I’ll do up another one and remove the shadow so it looks sharper and send it over.
Matthew Needham Reply:
July 18th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Alex, thanks for the comment my friend! I agree with you. How much work is actually relationship building and how much is actually having fun. Sure it’s great to have both, but don’t fool ourselves thinking the latter is the former…. Thanks for the comment on the image! Much appreciated.
Very interesting post, one I happen to like because it’s making me think.
I’m fairly engaging on social media and on my blog. I’m engaging when I get into certain business situations.
In general, though, I’m not sure how engaging I am. As a matter of fact I’m not as engaging as I need to be in getting new business; I need to get off my hatred for the telephone and just get it done. I’m also not great in social situations if I have to be the one to open up a conversation, but if someone talks to me first, I’m pretty good from that point.
See, something you mentioned above kind of holds me back, that being the “get on people’s nerves” part. I don’t intrude on other people’s conversations and I also don’t intrude on other people’s space. To me, if I write my blog and others come to it, they made that choice. The same goes for my commenting on other blogs; people put it out there and if they’ve made commenting a relatively easy and peaceful thing to do and I can contribute, then I will, although sometimes those folks might not necessarily like what I have to say.
Very good stuff for me to read on a Sunday morning; nice job.
Matthew Needham Reply:
July 26th, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Hi Mitch, thanks for your comment here. I’m glad it’s made you think.
I know exactly what you mean. It’s hard to make the first move. Gary Vaynerchuk in the Thank You Economy talks about approaching engagement as if you’re trying to woo a girl who has just broken up with the love of her life. Whilst I like this description, one thing that’s worked for me is to ask people questions about themselves. People find it so much easier to talk about themselves than anything else.
However, you’ve got to be careful that engagement doesn’t cross over to wasting time, which all too many people use the term networking to relate to time wasting. You need to work out what’s effective for you, whether that’s twitter or facebook, what gets you the most engagement?
Thanks for the comment!
Matthew
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