We understand that having a blog or forum alone is not being social, it’s simply a tool set.  If you are a little overzealous and implement the tools first, you quickly understand that it is going to take more…a lot more than just tools to live up to the expectations that everyone has around social media.  So you sit in the middle of your corporate blog or new customer service forum and wonder what’s next.  Try a content and / or engagement strategy.

Without engagement there is no social and without content there is no engagement.  From this, it becomes apparent that developing a strategy around content and engagement can be very useful.  So where to start?

Content without engagement is a traditional approach to marketing like television or radio.  The content goes one way or is “pushed” at the audience.  While we could take an editorial approach to content development, let’s look at it a bit differently.  Whether you produce the content, your agency produces it, whether your content is available on external sites or your own sites, there is still a premise that I come back to.  Consumers buy products because they believe in the product, they relate to it, the product description fulfills a need or some other reason that stems from the fact that something about the content was relevant enough to make me purchase whether its ingredients, description, a jingle, ad copy, whatever, there was some form of trust around that content.  This is the key, your content has to instill trust with your participants.

With all the aggregation tools out there, it is easy to take the lazy way out of creating content for your corporate social initiatives.  Like a Twitter account that only re-tweets or a blog run on yahoo pipes, that content can be found anywhere so there is no reason to trust your company as a resource for content.  Like your content, your company becomes irrelevant quickly too.  Create content that sets your company apart, create a perspective that participants can have passion with and always do it under the premise that no matter what the content, your participants have to be able to trust it.  The first time they find a hole or blatant lie in your content, you will lose that trust for a very long time.

On the other hand, engagement without content feels empty and does not last long.  Like any guy at a bar without a good pick-up line, he can smile, approach and may smell good but after standing there for a while, you’re going to have to get past the “Hi, I’m Joe/Jeff/Bob/Mike, what’s your name?”.  There are many reasons for engagement and while most strategists will focus on what your company has to do to get ready to be engaging, don’t forget to think about why anyone would want to participate with your company.  A good, initial litmus test is whether you can answer the “So What?” question.  You arm the interns with conversational research data, you’ve been listening for months, you have tons of ideas for content and the executives are behind it.  If you are selling toilet paper, my response is “so what?”, why would a consumer care to participate around the product?  In this case, create a passion much like General Mills did with their Box Tops campaign to raise money for k-8 schools.

Does engagement or content come first?  If I create content and no one is listening, is it worth my time?  On the other side, if your customers are passionate around your Brand and want to participate, you better get some content so they have a reason to come back.  I’m not sure there is a right answer for everyone.  The right answer depends on every company’s unique situation, resources, time, talent and ability to execute.  Our moderator this week knows a lot about these answers and we are excited to have John Cass leading the way.  John has literally written the book on corporate blogging and has a wealth of experience to share with us.  The topic this week will be:

Topic: The Importance of a Content and Engagement Strategy in Social Media

Q1: What’s first, content marketing and/or engagement marketing as the lead strategy?

Q2: How should you handle disclosure of content origination whether employees or agency?

Q3: Charlene Li’s engagement 2009 report staked out most engaged brands, what’s key to implement a successful SM engagement strategy?

Please join us on Tuesday March 16 at noon EST to share your point of view.  Follow along on #sm51 or from our LIVE page.

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