Social Media Engagement Is Growing

In a new published report by Sprout Social, we see that although all signups and uses of the major social networks is growing, the engagement grows exponentially. This shows that a brands presence on these networks online is no longer a passive experience, where users simply consume what is pushed to them in their networks, but they want to engage and interact with what’s being provided to them.

Royal Dutch Airlines enhances their user engagement with a promise to respond quickly, as shown in their Twitter Header

Of course, as engagement from users gets measured, so does engagement on the brand or producer end. As highlighted by Social Media Today, KLM Airlines‘ Twitter page measures and highlights the time it takes to respond to any customer reply. I’m curious if Sprout Social’s analysis of time-to-response is measured only for the brand’s direct response to each message, as these may not necessarily be customers with questions (ie. KLM responding to a “arriving at Berlin via @KLM” tweet doesn’t require as speedy of a response as, “Berlin @KLM flights overbooked, don’t know what to do.”)

The “4 out of 5 consumer inquiries go unanswered” is pretty shocking, and although it’s possible to generate some custom internal tools to alleviate the response time, it’s a lot easier to find horror stories of off-the-shelf tools making matters worse.