What kind of brand engagement do you want?

When we work with clients to carry out their brand marketing strategies, we’ll of course always ask them the key question: What are your goals for your video campaign?

Because digital marketers are an intensely numbers-driven and numbers-oriented lot, we’ll often hear answers like:

1. “I want to generate 200,000 views of my video content.”
2. “I want to attract a lot more people to my video app compared to what we’re getting now through our brand’s Facebook group.”
3. “I want my video to be shared within communities of young people — our company’s target audience.”

Definitely, we’re grateful to work with such clear mindsets and execute against such precise company goals. The Involver platform has been able to produce more than a few home run video campaigns — and we’ve been able to do this, in part, because our clients have been helpfully adamant about communicating their success benchmarks.

Now, after running thousands of campaigns, we just have one more substantive idea to add to this whole goal-setting topic.

Over the last two years, we’ve had countless opportunities to witness the wide spectrum of activity that constitutes user brand engagement on social networks. Commenting about a brand; sharing videos across friend networks, feeds, and profiles; and interacting with others via white-label social applications — these reflect some of the touchpoints through which people can engage with a specific brand identity.

So, given this — given the various types of activities that can serve to promote and strengthen one’s brand — we think that companies ought to ask an important follow-up question regarding their short-term and long-term marketing goals: What specific kinds of engagement would your brand really benefit from?

• Do you want people to join and commit to your campaign for the long-haul? Do you want the ability to message them over the long term with the reasonable expectation that these folks will respond duly and regularly?
• Do you want your enthusiasts to be active content creators? Would having them generate commentary, photos, and videos on your company’s behalf help frame your brand as vibrant and open?
• Do you want your enthusiasts to share your content (including your videos) in quick, massive bursts? Do you have a seasonal product or offering that you’d like your video viewers to buy immediately?
• Or something else?

Thinking about your ideal engagement behaviors in this way can help you fine-tune your campaign significantly. And from a design standpoint, this kind of self-reflection can help social platform providers understand what kinds of viral channels and loops they need to build, customize, and optimize for your organization on social networks.

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