Joel identified the coherence problem.
Unless you’re selling memberships or advertising, maximizing engagement is useless.
Each additional engagement doesn’t yield an additional dollar (or cent).
Worse, it can decrease valuable activity as key contributions and members are lost in the clutter and overwhelm.
Forget commitment curves, engagement ladders, and the like. Only a tiny fraction of members will ever progress through them anyway. Instead, focus on a simple strategic plan.
The Mayo Clinic’s strategic plan, for example, is:
A plan directly connects your goal to the tactics. To clarify:
- The goal is something the organization cares about (the impact you want to make)
- The objectives are what you need (segments) of the audience to do.
- The strategies are why they will do it.
- The tactics are what you do to get them to do it.
We waste far too much of our community’s potential chasing engagement.
This would be a great year to stop chasing engagement.
