Drew,
Good questions! I think many of us are asking ourselves the same thing, after spending what seems like too many hours a day on social networking sites. I find that engaging on these sites does drive people to my blogs and sites (which I'm currently rebuilding), and I do get a lot more private email from people. I have had some increase in sign-ups for my e-letters, but not a huge increase—I think people are perhaps burning out on subscribing to too many e-letters. So, the "touch points" are increasing, and I think one's "brand" can reach many more people. Over time, this builds trust and can result in more business referrals, inquiries and even meeting people who might be partners or collaborators on projects. What I find most valuable is when I ask a question on one of my blogs or on a social network and get immediate feedback that helps me in my business-building, or on some other personal issue. However, I think it would be much more efficient to be able to get demographics for the social networking sites so we could compare them and decide which ones are really reaching out to our specific "audiences" or market niches—if we're there primarily for business networking—and concentrate mainly on those sites. For making friends, though, it's worth checking out different ones.

I'll be curious what other people think, and what results you feel you're getting after a period of time. A lot of these sites are too new to have constant demographics yet, although we should be able to get them for Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other major ones.

Cathryn/Creative Sage(tm)

Cathryn, I totally agree with what you are saying, but my question to you is this - is what you are describing more then just engagement? Further if it is, what is it exactly? My point and my question revolve around the idea that if I for any reason come to your site, spend time there, and come away with nothing, then I have technically been engaged by you but to no avail, we have accomplished nothing expect wasted time, not saying that would or will happen, its just a hypothetical, but if we define engagement as just me going to your site, if I take away nothing, if my being there accomplishes naught but I spent time there, does my being engaged have any meaning, and if not, does the currency of engagement have validity and if not what does?

Great questions even for old media. If someone buys a newspaper or a magazine, does that accomplish anything for the advertisers? If a magazine (through reader surveys, for instance) can give some indication of how long the average reader spends with the magazine, or how many people read the average copy, does that provide any indication of usefulness to the advertiser? To the authors? To the subjects of the news?

Or if thousands of people buy a book but only dozens read it, what has been accomplished?

I think one complication with your question is that it is mixing a metric used by publishers and advertisers for financial reasons: how long has someone been exposed to a site/image/periodical/ad; and an intellectual or moral metric: has someone been changed by the site/image/periodical/ad. Sometimes we can't ever know about the second kind of engagement; but even when we can know, it requires a totally different measurement than time spent "engaged."

I'm not satisfied with my reply, and I blame it on this silly, tiny, little scrolling box I'm forced to use by Pownce!

*And*, I would note, all my paragraph breaks were eliminated by Pownce.

I think we have to go a step beyond "engagement" as a goal to some sort of "commitment of action" on the part of the user, if you want them to do something, like buy your products or services (or the advertisers' products and services). Or, if you're a nonprofit, the commitment would be to support your cause, either by donating, volunteering, or simply spreading the word. But before getting the user to commit to action, we do have to let them know we're here, get them to recognize our "brand" or purpose, and then "engage" them enough to be interested; so it's a multi-step process that takes awhile. It's not a goal that can be reached in one step, usually, unless the user is ready to buy or act immediately and happens to visit your site, blog or social network that day. The other gain is referrals—I've gotten some myself by building trusting relationships with friends on social networks and blogs. It's a series of necessary steps in relationship building over time. Quick measurements don't always factor this in, and I think there are ways we can speed up the cycle of referrals and direct sales. As for advertising, I always think a good PR campaign in ALL media, new and old, but carefully targeted, is more effective than simply advertising .

I agree, and the more I think about it, the more I think I know what the word is, I need to dwell on this. I think I see a white paper in my future, in fact I think I shall write one. Look for my thoughts on this soon.

great discussion-I'd like to add my 2 cents if I may. I believe Oteth intimated at it-how do you measure whether site made significant impression or not?Not to get Freudian here but now we are entering the realm of the subconscious. Have you ever seen a movie and went away baffled or a little annoyed and yet some time later found yourself thinking about elements and having a number of related thoughts?

Drew I fully understand what you're saying and not really challenging it. Believe me as a businessman I'd love a quick kill, but as Cathryn alludes relationships take time. Here we go again with this nebulous time factor.

In my social networking experiences so far, I've received on lead and have had many interesting conversations. I haven't pushed much yet to try to "work" my contacts. I've been much more organic with them and so far it is interesting. I am probably most impressed by Facebook due to the people I'm meeting/finding there and the way system is organized. It seems to offer a good filter into the community activity and I can socially engage in the smorgasbord effect, and then target more finely from there.

Mark

I completely agree with you. However I think there is a quality to all the engagements we have been discussing that separates them from those engagements where we walk away from a site or a sim in SL, not really happy with the experience. What I am attempting to both qualify and quantify is what that elusive element is. Why you ask,, because I read over and over again blogs, especially about SL that speak of brand engagement and the holy grail of the currency of engagement. I simply seek to define what that elusive quality so I can challenge the incorrect assumptions hyped in the currency of engagment

Drew,
Good luck (in the true sense, not the accept your fate sense :) )and will be very interesting to tack your efforts in distilling this. I too am opposed to the skewed hype-it bothers me when PT Barnum is vindicated repeatedly. Unfortunately, Corporations are worse than we social mediasts when it comes to following the herds, on the "me too" reflex. But I digress.

Your thread is very interesting to me-nice to see someone digging for some meat.

IMO, if we did none of those things, there was no engagement - all you did was occupy a part of their attention for a while. You didn't actually engage them.

So Tateru, any deeper insights into the "engage" mojo? How does one achieve that and how do you qualify?

Tat

Thats my point in a way, you see occupying there time is technically engaging them as it qualifies a s a metric, they were there, they looked around they spent time. By current metric definition that is engagement. My point is THAT is meaningless, and we need define the elusive term that describes the real thing, the real qualitative state, that we are trying to archive. I think I have my hands on it, and will be releasing a white paper on it shortly

Ok I'll chill until the man with the white paper comes waving at me. Good discussion drew. I'm engaged.

Mark

you've been more then engaged since the beginning, you came away from my original post more then engaged, what I am working is defining a term for what is is you now are

Ensnared?? In the cross-hairs??

I think, perhaps, what we need is an agreeable definition of engagement. I mean (by at least one definition that I use - incorporating the thing into your physical/virtual life in your own way), well, corporate brands have armies of lawyers intent on preventing people doing that.

If engagement is the incorporation of a brand into your experience on your own terms - that's just not what the brand owners want in many cases.

(Footnote) We're having a discussion as a two way (or N-way where N>1) thing. That's engagement there, too. If I was nodding and yes-dear'ing you, then it wouldn't be two-way and there would not necessarily be engagement.