Black Jelly Beans and Social Media Engagement

This past Sunday I randomly posted a Facebook status saying that I was “eating black jelly beans.” I had no goal in mind other than to tell people what I was doing. But 11 people chimed in, and 36 comments later, we had an interesting conversation, with people weighing in on the merits, or lack thereof, of black jelly beans.

The point of this is that whether you blog or spend time using one or more of the available Social Media platforms, you are in the business of creating content.

The people on the other end have two choices: they can either ignore you, or read what you have to say.

Let’s take it one step further. If they read your content, they then have three choices.

1. They read and just move on – This isn’t as bad as ignoring what you have to say, but certainly isn’t much better. At least you got them to read. But if all they do is read and walk away…you haven’t gained much. The best you can hope for is that they tuck you in the back of their minds and come back sometime. Perhaps the next time they will actually “react” and maybe even become a client/customer.

2. They read and respond – This is definitely one of the desired outcomes. Hopefully your content is compelling enough and people decide to engage you. On a blog, this comes in the form of a comment. On Facebook it might be a comment or a “like”. On Twitter, this would be an @ reply. More often than not, this is a positive thing, but there are times when the engaging comes in the form of negative comments. You can learn more about how to handle negative comments in my posts Control and Social Media and Chicken Little.

Regardless, comments and engagement of this sort are good. In effect, you’ve thrown a topic out there for discussion, someone has responded, and now it’s your turn to keep that conversation going. Even a negative comment is a chance to keep the conversation alive.

3. They read and tell others – This is often goes along with responding, and is perhaps the best of all reactions. This is when someone retweets you on Twitter, or uses the “share” button on Facebook. And this is also why it’s incredibly important to build a blog that works well within the constructs of the social web. That’s why on this post (and every post on my site) you’ll see buttons giving you the option of retweeting and sharing on a variety of social platforms. This includes sites like Digg, Delicious, and Stumble upon. If your readers get your blog posts in an RSS Reader, they might “share” it with others. Or via email, they might forward it.

This is where word-of-mouth kicks in. If I like a book, movie, band, or restaurant, I’m the type that wants to tell others. I might even let them borrow my copy of the book or CD. When I find something I really like, I want everyone else to know. Social Media makes this easy, and the coming of the semantic web will make it even easier.

But your job? You’re in charge of creating the compelling content in the first place. Write tweets that people want to retweet. Write blog posts that make people think and respond. And create content or status updates that get the conversation going.

There’s no formula for this, but go for things that inspire either intellectual or visceral reactions. Obviously there are those that love black jelly beans. At the same time, there are those misguided individuals who have nothing nice to say about these wonderful little confections.

Is your content compelling? Track and follow what you do to see if there are any patterns. What types of content get the best reaction and which get no reaction?

And just as importantly, how do you feel about black jelly beans?

Tagged as: engagement, Marketing, Social Media