Engagement:  communication re-imagined.

Traditional concepts of communication tend to focus on the individual touchpoint (a Sales Leader Conference, a product reveal, a promotional video). Engagement focuses not only on maximizing the individual touchpoint, but also the connection of one touchpoint to another.

The core concepts of engagement

• It’s not just receiving a communication; it’s reacting to that communication by making note, responding to it or forwarding it.


• It’s not just the individual touchpoint (event, communication), it’s how that touchpoint links to other touchpoints, creating an ongoing relationship.

So, if we’re truly interested in how well an event engages the target audience, then we need to look at:

Inbound Links:

• What are the objectives of the event?


• How many links brought people into the event?


• What content/message drove those links?


• How aligned were those links with the objectives of the event?


• What did the links point to in the event?

Internal Links:

• Where were vision, information, education and socialization messages/activities located in the event?


• How aligned are these messages/activities with the objectives of the event?


• How did the journey move the audience in the right sequence from one message/activity to the next?


• How did the event allow the audience to adjust the journey as needed?

Outbound Links:

• How many links continued the event dialog beyond the event itself?


• What content/message drove those links?


• What did the links point to outside the event?


• How do those outbound links support the objectives of the event?

The word engagement is showing up everywhere, recently. For some, it’s just the marketing-babble-flavor-of-the-month: last month, it was experiential marketing; this month it’s engagement. I like to think that we’re going deeper than that, at InVision; that we’re not just communicating, we’re trying to capture hearts and minds and imaginations. And we’re doing the right thinking that will get us there.