Why Focus on User Experience Rather Than Engagements in Your Social Media Campaign?

A successful social media presence is designed based on experiences, not just on engagements. Engagements are based on activities, and activities are a set of actions taking place independent of each other (ads, apps, posts, etc). Many brands first decide what their social media marketing strategy should be, and then later assign each activity to different teams and vendors.

•  But what happens from the moment the user clicks on an ad, for example, and gets directed to an app?
•  What makes them continue this experience, become a fan, and interact with that app?
•  What is the user abandon rate (users that a brand loses) during these transitions?

We can’t forget about designing the experience that happens in between these activities, as Jared Spool, the founding principal of User Interface Engineering suggests in his Designing Great Experiences:

“Designing for experiences is about designing what happens between the activities. We’re designing in the gaps, as it were… when we’re designing for experiences, we research and design for the time that happens between the discrete activities. We look for opportunities to expand the design space, connecting the activities into a continuous stream.”

When brands focus on experiences rather than engagements, they can design campaigns that convince the user to trade a bit of their privacy in return for a valuable experience. Today, it’s no longer a hassle for a user to unsubscribe from a mailing list or unlike a brand; therefore creating a good experience is key to retaining a fan and creating incentive for them to share among their social networks. User experience design is not just another step in the campaign; it is the vision that designs the whole process. Wherever there is a user, there is an experience, and our experiences make or break a relationship with an individual or a brand.

Successful brands create experiences rather than pure products, and that’s how all brands should look at their social media marketing strategy.

For more information on how Webtrends can help you design your user experiences as well as engagements, contact us at the U.S. and global phone numbers found here.