What is Social Engagement?
Up to recent times we have seen a division between online engagement, "social media", and offline engagement, "community engagement". But these lines are beginning to merge. For example, businesses are starting to use the web to organize offlline "meet-ups" as part of their creating community campaigns. This trend will only get stronger as the current enchantment with the web as a new medium is balanced with the natural need for face-to-face contact with like minded individuals.
Client Comment
Pauline was one of the key persons in the success of the community engagement program for the Seattle Public Schools' $490 million BEX III contract. I would highly recommend her to any prospective client or employer.
- Chuck Clegern
- Principal, DKA Architecture
Introduction
While it used to be primarily public funded projects that needed to be involved with informing and empowering community “stakeholders”, all businesses and organizations now need to understand and consider including community engagement as part of their marketing plan.
Community members increasingly want to have a voice in how their community will be affected by new projects taking place in their environment. This is in part due to the empowerment they have experienced since the creation of the web, where they are increasingly in the driver’s seat and able to communicate and organize with other like-minded people.
This desire to be empowered, to have a voice, is only becoming stronger as people experience the strength and benefits resulting from engagement.
Just like any medium, the evolution of the web is guided by specific principals. Two of these principals are:
- "Creating Community" and,
- “Power to the People”
These principals, combined with the advancement of technology from dial-up to broadband has given rise to the phenomenon of the creation and exchange of user-generated content, also known as “social media”.
Users are now in the driver’s seat, interacting with each other in communities, and they are using this newfound power to create and exchange their own ideas about companies, their brands and their products.
Many businesses are waking up to the realization that they are no longer in control of their message. They now have to share their message with their customers. In this environment, many businesses are starting to ask, “How do we control the perception of our company and products?”
Rather than looking at social media as a loss of power, businesses can benefit from it by using its underlying principals to create a community around their own company and products and to communicate information in new, personalized ways.
Let me help you explore social engagement and how its unique principals can benefit your business.
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Contact Information:
- Pauline Sugarman
- Blue Pearl Marketing
- P.O. Box 344
- Larkspur, CA 94977
- Telephone: 808.878.3000
- Email: pauline(at)bluepearlmarketing.net
