We have been overwhelmed with the response to our first Social Media Workshop next month and have decided to use this month’s Jargon Buster to explain a term that those attending the Workshop will hear us talk about a lot, which is Engagement.

When we say Engagement on Social Media we are essentially talking about how people interact with what you post online. Engagement on Facebook for example is measured on how many people ‘like’, comment and share your posts whilst on Twitter this is measured in ‘likes’, retweets and replies. But really engagement is so much more than this. Engaging with people online can be as simple as replying to a comment or retweeting something on your own twitter feed. Actions like this have been shown to form a key part of building relationships with customers with 88% of people saying they would like to engage with brands online. Statistics like this can’t be ignored when they overwhelmingly suggest that engaging with people online can play such a helpful role in helping to grow your brand.

Someone who has been in the news recently receiving praise for how he interacts and engages with his fans online is Gordon Ramsay. The famously foul mouthed chef is seeming inundated with people sending in their best culinary efforts for him to rate and in his typical brutally honest fashion he does just that. His humorous exchanges are regularly retweeted and liked by thousands of people and have helped build an online following of over 4 million. I have picked out some of my favourites below…

We hope this has helped explain what we mean when we talk about Engagement and are looking forward to our Workshop next month where we will be explaining this in even more detail as well as advising on strategies to really boost your engagement online!