Engagement Outweighs Quality Content

Social media puts value on sharing relevant content as well as interacting with the community. But which one weighs more? Is it being useful? Or is being engaging to your followers? What do you think?

The truth is, it varies from person to person. Some people are the informative kind, while some are the interacting kind. There’s no helping it, people are different from each other. It all depends on what you value most.

You may be the kind of person who places more importance in the relationship you build with other people when you socialize with them online. If that’s the case, that engaging outweighs being informative.

On the other hand, there are people who prefer to be useful than sociable. If such is the case, that interaction would have to take a back seat.

You’re just going to have to realize that balancing both aspects of social media is your best way to go. You can’t go about being informative all the time without setting aside time to acknowledge what people are saying about you or what you’re posting.

At the same time, you can’t just delegate your time replying to what everybody is commenting on your post because then you’ll lose time to find fresh and relevant content for your blog. When you don’t post anything of value to your readers, their interest will eventually die down and you’ll lose followers.

I don’t think you want that to happen, do you?

The term taking a back seat pretty much sums up how you should juggle being informative and being engaging. You simply can’t afford to ditch one for the other because both are important in keeping your followers happy and interested.

And even then you’re going to have to alternate which one takes the backseat and which one takes the front stage. I say this because every once in a while, your post hits jackpot and entices a lot of your readers to chip in on the conversation. Those are the kinds of post you can’t pass off on.

People will think that you’re not interested on their 2 cents worth of ideas if you don’t so much as put an effort to acknowledge their ideas. At the same time, you’re going to have to know when it’s time to move on and produce new content. You simply can’t stay put in one post when you’ve got other followers to keep happy.

So, what do you think? Which one’s more important, engagement or quality content?

Is Your Association Equipped to Integrate Social Media With Member Service? (mizzinformation.com)
When Social Media Become Unsociable (PodCamp Toronto) (slideshare.net)
Rethinking the whole influencer thing (socialmediatoday.com)

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http://turonatlugaw.wordpress.com/ Turon at Lugaw

We need good, if not great content to engage. At the same time, it's not “social” without the engagement. I agree that there should be a careful balance between the two.

This debate reminds me of my literature professor's dilemma in college. You have at least 10 people in class with various opinions on Shakespeare, formed by centuries worth of readings, and wanting to share what they know and believe. If he allowed everyone to speak, it'll take years for a class to finish–but we only have 18 weeks. We must move on, at some point.
http://twitter.com/hubuy Hub Uy

From a media perspective, content is king. Case in point, we see media outfits buying content left and right. Because for media practitioners, engagement will not happend without quality content.

But personally, I tend to agree agree with Turon at Lugaw, there is a need to balance the two. Media seem to be missing the point that content, no matter how good can never succeed if we don’t listen to our audience.