To Engage or Not to Engage

        Recently, I have been reading “Measure What Matters” by Katie Delahaye Paine. The book goes into a lot of different ways to market online to your customers as a company and how you can track your results to see if any of it is making a difference.

        Katie says there are some things that we can and can’t control when measuring our results. One of those things that we can control is engagement. She says that engagement is critical to a company for three reasons. These reasons include: building a relationship between your customers and your brand, to promote and protect your brand, and to make your products better.

        Engagement does help build relationships. If a customer has an issue with a product and they reach out to the company in some way, it is nice as a customer to hear back from the company. It lets them know that the company cares about them as a valued customer and as a person. Even if they don’t have a problem but just want to reach out to the company, it is still nice to hear back that the company appreciates their support in their product.

        If your customers engage with you, it can help your brand in numerous ways. If someone is not a fan of your product, and you try conversing with them to let them know you hear them, they may not care and go on trashing your product. In this case, a loyal customer who is a fan of your product may step in and defend the company and the product for you. If customers love your product, they may spread it all over a social media platform to their friends. Their friends could spread it to their friends and so on.

        By getting engagement from customers, you can actually make your product better. Listening to your consumers is key. You should always keep the consumers in mind first and give them what they want. If you give them what they want, you could sell more of your product than you were before.

        A lot of this feels like common sense, but I think that some companies forget about these tiny details and aspects. Give the people what they want and it will be well received. Engagement is a good thing and it doesn’t take too long or too much effort to put your customers first.