Defining Engagement

It may be Valentine’s Day, but that’s not the kind of engagement I’m referring to. No, engagement is a really popular word right now. I thought about being a word snob and inventing my won hipster word for the same phenomenon, like “Ascultonation” (if you know the root of that, you might also be a word snob. Please feel free to use it), but engagement is exactly the right word for what you want. It describes the condition you’re trying to evoke down to a T. Engagement is more than talking at people, and it’s more than getting them to listen.

It’s a feeling, one that you know well. It’s the feeling that you get when a speaker or teacher leaves you moved. It’s what you have when you’re excited to work on an assignment, and what students have when they leap to their feet to ask questions after class. It is the feeling which all writers, actors, and teachers desire. Anyone who creates content, really. When I talk about engaging with people, I’m talking about not only getting them to listen, but moving them to action. I want them to wrestle with things, and make sense of them. If you’re a teacher, you do the same thing in your classes. The rote repetition of ideas or formulae isn’t useful for anyone. To me, the most important part of engagement is what it’s not. It’s not agreement. In scholarship, the classroom, or the boardroom, engaging with an idea means thinking critically about it, close-reading and picking out the vital elements.

But that’s engagement in real space. What does engagement mean in social media? Same thing. Engagement isn’t getting more likes, shares, views, or retweets. None of those things hurt, but none of them indicate an engaged audience. More often than not, they’re evidence of a particularly funny grumpy cat picture. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good grumpy cat, but if you have a message, it’s not enough that it be widely spread, you need people to interact critically with it. Engagement in social media starts when people aren’t merely liking or sharing something, but talking about it. One of the great advantages of platforms like Twitter are that the creator is accessible, so they can discuss it with each other, or directly with you.

The best kind of engagement is when conversations turns into action, whether it’s twitter conversations informing and creating consequences in real space, or lessons in the classroom guiding students’ actions in their lives.It’s the thing we’re all after. Likes and shares, they’re not engagement, they’re attention, which is valuable in a different way.

And engagement is a two way street. It’s not just about people listening to you, but about listening to and talking with them. If you’re not openly and actively doing that, it makes people less inclined to engage with your work. Imagine two good teachers, one of whom spends a bit of time after class energetically talking with students, and one of whom waves them off to pursue other affairs. Both of them are good teachers. Neither of them is failing in some duty, but the one who stays behind is taking advantage of an opportunity to give students an extra push and to answer their questions informally. The power of those conversations cannot be underestimated. You can’t expect engagement without being willing to do it yourself.

This is just a what, not a how. How comes later. For now, it’s sufficient to know that while engagement is a word that gets thrown around a lot, what I mean by it is interaction which goes beyond simple shares, views, or clicks, and into the realm of critical discourse, conversation, and action.