One of my guilty pleasures is receiving my monthly edition of Men's Journal. The articles, photos, lifestyle pieces give me that pause to dream, relax and indulge and not necessarily think of work.
This months edition was no different until I got to an advertisement promoting magazines.
Obviously a joint campaign by some of our leading pop culture magazines, the ad promotes magazines for their "stickiness" pointing out that the majority of readers of magazines spend more dedicated time reading the magazine that they do with many other areas of their life. The ad states;
" Media continue to proliferate. Attention spans continue to shrink. And free content is available everywhere, from the Internet to the insides of elevators.
Why then are 93% of Adults still so attached to magazines? Why do so many people, young and old, spend so much time with a medium that's paper and ink, a medium you actually have to pay for in order to read?
In a word, engagement. Reading a magazine remains a uniquely intimate and immersive experience. Not only is Magazine readership up, readers spend an average of 43 minutes per issue."
Well it really got me thinking. How engaging is social media? How much of a relationships do we create through 140 characters at a time? How does losing intimacy and immersiveness play on the relationships long-term?
This is where I contend groups and organizations have to be realistic about the tools they use and the real impact those tools have on building long-term sustainable relationships with key stakeholders.
I think what's important to remember is that tools, like social media, are just that - tools. This is not the second coming of television where, as McLughan said "The medium is the message." If that were the case the message would be "I don't care deeply about what you care about." "I am only interested in your opinions as long as you can provide it in 30 words or less. You're opinion is no more important that my other 1.6 million followers. #winning."
Stakeholder Engagement is more than twitter and facebook. Stakeholder engagement is long-term relationship building on a number of fronts.
While social media has its place and allows us the immediacy of knowing what's happening where, don't lose sight of the importance of really connecting with people through face to face conversations, engaging video and audio, powerful words and opinions and most importantly - genuine listening.
Ask questions. Create Trust. Make people feel as though they really matter. That's engagement. That's intimacy. That's an immersive experience.
Do that and you've got a relationship you can count on when "IT" hits the fan.
Mike Randall
Engage Atlantic
