Imagine a world where every time something nice is said about you your response was merely “Thank You.”
Now, there is nothing wrong with being polite, but if your entire response was just that and nothing else, let’s just say your conversations would go stale very quick.
“Hey Dan, great job on that blog post about how overplayed Thank You is!”
Um, Thanks.
“Wow, well that conversation was absolutely mind blowing, but I’m going to go ahead and leave now,” the gracious complimenter may think.
In the world of Social Media and Digital Marketing there has been an explosion of thank you’s that follow up every share, comment and retweet. Some people on Twitter will even type “TYRT” and then retweet the retweet. It is insanity and moreover it isn’t engagement.
When digital marketers talk to brands about engaging it means putting useful content out there for their audience and then driving conversation to keep the content moving and the audience connected. So therefore, just saying thank you is hardly engagement and this practice needs to be reassessed.
Going forward let’s try something else instead of just saying thank you. Let’s pretend like we are two humans (which we are) sitting across the table (which we are by way of computer) and that we are trying to get to know one another and build some level of trust.
Now, if the person across from you reached out and said, hey I think what you just said was really smart. How would you really respond?
Think about that, and then the next time you are “Engaging” online, use that as your vehicle of communication.
For instance, take the pretend compliment I received (from myself) about my post on Thank You not being engagement. How would I really respond?
I would reply and say, Thank you so much. I am glad you enjoyed it. How do you feel about people that just fire off thank you as a response to every social share or like?
With that question I am opening the door to a conversation. notice I didn’t ignore gratitude. It was the first thing I said. However, the more important part was I took interest as to why they liked it and sought to use their kind words to drive more meaningful interaction.
Perhaps from time to time thank you is all that needs to be said, but I challenge you to think about how you use your engagement opportunities. Do you use them wisely? If thank you is your road map for engagement, it may be time to get a new map.
How do you show gratitude while driving meaningful engagement online?
Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.
