The 2 Rules of Engagement

Posted by schneidermike on Friday, September 18, 2009 · View Comments 

Nearly every panel on Social Media mentions Marcel Lebrun’s team and the Radian 6 platform. With that comes the obligatory mention of the Listen, Measure, Engage methodology. During the MITX Brand Personification #MITXSM panel on September 17,2009, there was mention of the usual tenets of social media:

  • Be transparent
  • Do not attempt to control the conversation
  • Engage

Each of these is riddled with theory versus practice, but the focus for now is engagement.

Photo by Mashley Morgan Used Under Creative Commons License

Photo by Mashley Morgan Used Under Creative Commons License

How do you decide where to engage?

Deciding where to engage should come from two angles. First, you need to decide how you want to represent your brand in social spaces and therefore you should have an idea of how you want to align with conversations that you deem important to you and your success. Important: you need to be willing to allow this to evolve.

offline your band is what you say, in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you

The second angle is listening to the crowd. At #mitxsm, we established that in online spaces, your brand is what the crowd says about you. That means you need to listen to the crowd. They are going to dictate the conversation whether the brand likes it or not. A brand can choose not to participate, but there are consequences to ignoring a conversation with significant participation. Significant participation is not always number of people, it has everything to do with who is participating. Pissing off one influential individual can have a serious ripple effect.

What are the 2 Rules of Engagement?

Respond
A brand needs to speak to the people who are engaging. When someone addresses the brand, it should respond in kind with an honest answer. This is not always pretty. Even brands who are known for engagement like @Jetblue and @SouthwestAir get the occasional hater. [aside: @JetBlue seems to be ignoring a couple of haters. I am talking to them to see why they hate and if the brand has enaged them via DM versus openly]. It’s how you handle the feedback that counts. You can win the haters over or at the very least you can show how you graciously accept them and incorporate their feedback. Both win you points. Your brand may be late to the game because the crowd has already kicked off the conversation on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc, but it’s never too late to join.

Picture 18

Provoke
The conversations that you care about may not exist the way you envision them. That does not necessarily mean that the crowd does not care or want to have that conversation. Brands need to be willing to provoke, instigate, antagonize or tease out a conversation. The best way to start conversations is to seek out individuals who would be likely to participate.

What? Well, if your product is adventure oriented, you might seek out people in the extreme sports, mountain climbing, hiking, mountain biking, kite surfing and shark tossing crowds. Then kick off a conversation. If you want to be known as the fertilizer expert, then talk about fertilizer with people who like to talk about landscaping, lawn care and gardening. Do not worry about whether you know people. Jump in. Discuss your views. Push out content that your audience cares about. Debate the merits of your ideas and the merits of the ideas of others in the crowd. Eventually you will make new friends. You will even get to a point where you are meeting people “offline” and while you may start your conversation with a “nice to meet you” handshake, your conversation will pick up where you left off online because you already have a relationship.

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Brand can be complex because companies and people are complex. Remember, when these rules apply to both personal and corporate brands. Mine is about social media, measurement, emerging technology, burrito enthusiasm, events, beer (which i channel through an alternate persona) and a little about style. I outwardly do not take myself too seriously but I do take my brand seriously.

@Direct_Tire engaged me today when I was talking about walking to work after dropping my car off for repairs. They got me to respond, but missed a chance to have a real conversation with them after I responded.

If you are a band, engage your fans or engage fans of music that you are paired with in the music genome project (Pandora), but find out what they like beyond your music. Analyze and choose the commonalities and have the conversation stem from there.

Picture 19

Remember, you are now building relationships, not just pushing out content. You can sponsor user generated content to get conversations going as well.

You can create campaigns using outreach programs that give people who like your products resources to create content for you, like Ford did with the #Fiestamovement. Oh and you thought I was just going to dog Ford in this article. Nah. They have made some good moves. And If you’re really feeling bold, engage your competition. That’s a sure fire way to get people talking.

The bottom line is that social media is not for the meek. What brand do you know that has a tenet of meekness? None. Is your brand engaging? What is holding you back?

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  • Hi Mike, I'll echo Carissa's "great post" comment! I didn't have a chance to follow the stream during #mitxsm and am left but to wonder if any of the participants went beyond the 2-rules of engagement to propose a broader engagement model.

    First off, I'm not a brand expert (maybe I shouldn't be commenting here) but over the course of my career I have seen many brands (that I've worked at) impacted by the lack of connection with their consuming public. That being said, I'm not sure that 2 rules suffice; yes, responding is a must and you should (need?) try to steer the conversation your way. I believe though that there are several more pieces to the puzzle requiring a more comprehensive framework.

    As an IT consultant I too need to respond and provoke, in a manner of speaking. However, how I respond and tease out a conversation is really part of a much broader engagement process I began using many years ago dubbed the "decision cycle" or OODA Loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop). An "OODA" loop is a method of engagement whereby you and your environment are in a continuous interaction cycle. The cycle is broken down into 4-pieces: observe, orient, decide and act.

    It seems to me that the 2-rules you speak of, "respond" and "provoke", are part of the same concepts of OODA. Arguably, as @KatJaib and @carissao have indicated, respond and provoke are necessary BUT must be part of a broader process (@KatJaib mentions "listen") -- brands must begin by "observing" their constituent brand marketplace, "orient/provoke" the conversation based upon brand strategy, market filters and customer activity, make "decisions" based upon a stated brand strategy, and "act" on that brand strategy.

    Simple, right? ;-)

    Thanks Mike!
  • belchingmonkey
    Your comment here is valuable. Always interested in other perspectives and i am particularly interested in drilling down on the OODA loop.

    This is a conversation about Listen, Measure, Engage, where I am focused solely on engage. OODA is Listen, Measure Engage, but a more intense study of the process. A technical look, if you will, as the process we use within the methodology.

    Listen: Observe
    Measure: Orient / Decide
    Enagage: Act

    Simple indeed.
  • I enjoyed this post a great deal because it really touches on what a brand should strive to accomplish and underscores my belief that there is no one-size-fits-all method though there are certain tactics that can be employed by anyone and everyone. As a community manager I certainly engage the community pretty much all day. I've started to communicate with my branded community on other platforms as well and they seem to like that. My organization as a brand is pretty active on Twitter and there are times we've discussed the appropriate response before answering a question or claim. So, when the brand haters do show up, we don't ignore them we just make sure we agree on the strategy (public, DM) if it is a touchy issue though fully realizing that anything sent via DM could become public. Respond and provoke work for me though I feel there are a few more that are equally important.
    Angela Connor
    Author, "18 Rules of Community Engagement"
  • Some good points here. I would add #3: Listen (which is some of what you've covered under Decide where to engage). Listen to what people say TO you and ABOUT you, your peers, your competition.

    Brands put too much focus on Provoking and not enough on Responding. Same for individuals. I am constantly amazed at how people on Twitter will throw out provocative questions, and then ignore all but 1 or 2 of the people who @reply them. Brands are terrible with this. And individuals who seem to have acquired a "big name" with an ego to match are the worst.

    The Twitter crowd wants real connection. Fakes will fail, fast.
    Being "real" isn't enough. Being interested is as important as being interesting. The brands and individuals that get it have much to gain.
  • Nice post, Mike, and while I followed the Twitter stream a bit, I'm sorry I missed #mitxsm because it sounds like there was some solid discussion there.

    I couldn't agree more with the concept that engagement cannot stop with a simple @ reply or the mere start of a conversation. While that's a big step in the right direction for brands that are new to the social waters, it's really just creating a ripple when you want to make waves. If you have an opportunity to truly engage a customer--or prospective customer--and you leave them with nothing more than a slight impression, what value have you really created? Not much. The customer might be willing to give you a second chance, but don't count on much more than that.

    On a similar note, it seems all too many brands are completely focused on building those relationships through conversations that involve nothing beyond the very narrow focus of their products or services. Do you have many friends with which you talk about only one thing? Probably not. So, why do this with the customers you're trying to win for life? As long as it's consistent with the image you're aiming to portray, engage them in conversations about related (or even unrelated) topics that prove your value, and THEN you'll win their following and their loyalty.

    Thanks again, Mike.
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