BarnRaisers

As more touch points for a business to connect with its customers come into use; so does the use of the term, brand engagement.

Brand engagement certainly seems like a worthwhile activity but what does it actually mean? What results should be expected? How do you measure it? Because, as Peter Drucker said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Here’s how 21 experts define and measure brand engagement.

DEFINITION

1. The discovery and exchange of shared values and interests – Linda Boff, Global Executive Director of Digital, Advertising and Design, GE
2. Communicating well enough that the audience pays attention – Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer
3. The creation of a distinct image versus competition that deepen the love for a brand and influences beliefs and perceptions - Kurt Frenier, The Red Hot Marketing Blender
4. The building of lasting relationships with you customers – Definition6
5. The ability to successfully engage consumers, create loyalty and drive profitability against pre-specified category – Linda Hollebeck, Journal of Strategic Marketing
6. The set of activities a company is involved in to strengthen relationships with these communities – Arie Moyal
7. The interactive process of moving the customer forward, to a stronger sense of self, and to a higher plane of being and doing - Brian Phillips, Brands Create Customers
8.  The consumer’s relationship with a brand, his or her ability to choose how and when to engage, and the value each channel represents based on the six most important consumer needs: Feeling Valued, Trust, Efficiency, Consistency, Relevance and Control – Razorfish
9. Any action a consumer takes with your content - Matt Rednor, VP of Global Strategy and Analytics, MRY
10. A term loosely used to describe the process of forming an attachment (emotional and rational) between a person and a brand. It is equally created by the perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors - Wikipedia,

MEASUREMENT

1. Words people use to describe your brand gives real insights into these feelings. Bravo has developed a simple scoring index to embrace this logic. By categorizing the words people use we can better understand the degree of brand understanding and acceptance in the market – Bravo, Brand and Customer Experience Measurement
2. A measure of the proportion of your site visitors who found your site because of your brand, and is calculated as: brand keyword visits + direct visits/ total search visits + direct visits – Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics 
3. The count of people that interact with their products on Facebook, assessing the use of Facebook’s “Like” feature as well as what viewers say on their own profile pages – comScore engagement metric
4. We have strong statistical confirmation that involvement, influence, intimacy and interaction are important and predictive dimension that measure Brand Engagement. The Brand Engagement Index integrates the scores on each of these four dimensions – InSites Consulting, creators of the Brand Engagement Index
5. Engagement is not a metric, it’s an excuse. It tries to measure something that is deeply qualitative – Avinash  Kaushik, Author, Digital Marketing Evangelist – Google, Co-founder – Market Motive
6. A measure of “gross rating points” on Facebook; a combination of audience reach and frequency of impressions – Nielsen engagement metric
7. Linking, bookmarking, blogging, referring, clicking, friending, connecting, subscribing, submitting inquiry forms and buying are all engagement measures at various points in the customer relationship – Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank Online Marketing
8. As always it depends on the audience and the goals. If the audience is employees and you want employees to be engaged — we measure it by the percentage of employees that contribute to Yammer, the degree to which people read and comment on our internal blog, the increase in internal referrals, reduced turnover rate, etc. - Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, and author, Measure What Matters
9. From integrated social sharing buttons, in-page print and email links, product downloads and rich media content, websites now offer such rich experiences that understanding engagement is becoming an easier task for marketers – Nichole Rawski – Manager, Analytics, Digitaria
10. Engagement depends on your target audience and can equate to time spent on site (for website engagement), active conversations in comments sections (for blog engagement), successful point-of-view covered in the media or on a blog (for PR outreach engagement) and more – Mark Story, Communicator, Writer, Professor and Evangelist for using social media for public relations functions.
11. There is still lack of clarity and debate about whether this is a “soft” or hard measure, and whether it can be linked to any consumer or employee behavior change – e.g. sales activity, trial, or recommendation – Wikipedia

From the definitions, brand engagement is clearly a worthwhile pursuit but one where measurement is not so clear.

Maybe, like anything that is relationship based, there will always be tangibles and intangibles and the metrics you should stick to are the business results you want to happen in the first place. Then, as you pursue brand engagement activities, see how they either improve or not.

What’s your opinion on the definition and measurement of brand engagement?