Before anyone suggests that engagement and building relationships shouldn’t be a strategy, consider your own personal relationships. At some point, no matter how random the meeting, you made a decision to continue it. You listened longer, you made plans to see one another again, you reached out. Developing a strategy around engagement – be it about attracting members, selling a service or membership or merely providing more of what your audience wants, is a way to push past the noise of the social sphere and develop a more rewarding relationship on both sides. It’s crucial associations find a way to cut through the clutter with a strategy that engages people in an authentic and natural way. If you are one of those lucky individuals who naturally connects with someone, who says the perfect thing at all times (without sounding disingenuous) and knows the best way to appeal to your audience through some magic, chameleon-like approach, then don’t watch the video. But for the rest of us the 9 C’s of Engagement can be helpful.
In a recent Software Advice interview – a reviews and ratings publisher – Constellation Research CEO and Principal Analyst R “Ray” Wang discussed research he recently compiled called: “Building Your Interaction Strategy with the 9 C’s of Engagement.”
Engagement is not achieved through simply adding members to an email list, or blasting out events on Twitter and Facebook. Wang suggests following the “9 C’s of Engagement” when building your interaction strategy. These “C’s” can be divided into three categories:
- People-Centric Values: Culture, Community, Credibility
- Delivery and Communication Styles: Channel, Content and Cadence
- Right Time Drivers: Context, Catalyst and Currencies
In this video, Wang describes how companies and membership organizations can use these three pillars to build an effective engagement strategy.
About Ashley Verrill
Ashley Verrill is a market analyst a Software Advice. She has spent the last six years reporting and writing business news and strategy features. Her work has appeared in myriad publications including Inc., Upstart Business Journal, the Austin Business Journal and the North Bay Business Journal. Before joining Software Advice in 2012, she worked in sales management and advertising. She is a University of Texas graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
You can be the best writer in the world but if you don’t “listen” and “watch” and know your audience, your content will always fall short. Creating top-notch content is as easy as predicting the end of a romantic comedy. But to do it, you have to stop producing what you want to produce and concentrate on what your members want to consume. A good listener should never run out of content but just in case you’re feeling a little stymied right now, here are five superstar ideas to get you started:
