Don’t Just Talk About Engagement – DO IT!

It’s not often that I rant but I can’t hold this one any longer.

Over the past couple of weeks I have seen several blog posts about engaging. Advice and recommendations have included:

  • If someone mentions you in a tweet respond
  • If someone sends you a direct message respond
  • If someone sends you an email respond
  • If someone tags you in a Facebook or Instagram post respond

And the the list goes on.

Here’s the deal – if you talk about engagement then do it! I took some of these engagement evangelists at their word and sent them a quick message to see if they practiced what they were preaching. In some cases I was sincerely interested in what they had to say or had a real question that I was wanting answered. The large majority (90+ percent) of those I reached out too did not respond in any way.

If you have a blog, if you tweet, if you post on Facebook or LinkedIn, if you are Instagramming, G+ing or if you have a presence anywhere else online you need to be ready to engage.

And if you are talking about engagement that means you should absolutely be ready to respond. In my “testing” I was amazed at the number of people who I followed on Twitter who sent me Direct Messages asking me a question but who didn’t follow me back so that I could actually answer their question. Don’t ask me a question if you don’t want an answer or if its just meant to make me click on a link that just shoves more “stuff” at me.

So, before you talk about engagement just be sure you are ready to actually do it.

What do you think?