Just finished reading a great  (lengthy) post from Martin Weigel entitled “Engagement: Fashionable but Bankrupt“. I wish I had 4 hours to respond right now to his worthy effort, though I suppose this response will create many more hours of discussion. Please go read it, in full if you can, he has some really great insights and quotes some strong sources and brilliant thinkers/writers in addition to his own valuable contributions.

I agree with many of his observations, but disagree with his conclusion that we shouldn’t talk about or use the word engagement any more and those who do are victims to the latest fashion craze / fad. To claim such necessity is just as if you were to say we need to stop talking about marketing, interaction, networking or anything else.

Just because some people misuse a word, or apply hyperbole is not reason enough to not find the distinction, in the proper context, valuable. Just as we argued for the need to use the phrase ‘social media’ to demonstrate its unique characteristics from the traditional, it is necessary to accentuate the idea of engagement still. Just as many will dilute the concept of engagement and oversell it through hyperbole and puffery as happened with social media, many more will bring greater clarity to the language we use to describe what is, in the long arc of our history, a new concept. Some will get it wrong, some will add value, some will be turned off, some will be overly excited… and in the natural course of the public conversation about what it means and what it doesn’t mean, we will create understanding of its true meaning together.

Maybe moving forward on a better definition may help. One potential, though abstract, description would be to think about engagement as the mutual exchange of value through shared attention that is intended to result in a new relationship or the strengthening of one between people and the organizations they represent – maybe that contribution helps to clarify or makes it sound like more BS in your mind, but it is another step forward nonetheless. We need steps forward, not people telling others what language they should use. That’s coming from someone who has tried it, and I know it doesn’t work all that well! Trust me on this one.

This sort of issue, the semantic argument around it, as well as the miscomprehension / misuse of the language at the heart of the matter, has been one of the longstanding challenges of the overall social media ‘movement’. Indeed, the over-hype cycle and the absolute rainbows+unicorns=NewSocioeconomicWorld view is not always helpful or presently accurate. Yet, the possibility of these envisioned benefits of engagement do exist. Unfortunately the reality of the human condition, and many other realities (what I call the social physics) often prevent the best and most bold societal changes from being manifested. While the ideal changes in behaviour emerging technology and the ‘social’ revolution it creates in may occasionally be inaccurate or unrealistic, that is no reason to not dream of a better world, where organizations and people exist in a truly free market with mutual respect for one another, free of disinformation, exploitation of manipulation.

You can give up on using the word engagement and encourage others to do so, but that will not silence the dreamers and the entrepreneurs striving to create the better world they envision. It is simply a question of looking at the bigger picture over the longer term – despite the difficulty of creating societal change to achieve some of the benefits encompassed in the shift from broadcast models of marketing to engagement, the miuse or misstatement of claims of benefit are not reason enough to give up on the pursuit.