Engage, or Die!

If you just finished reading Brian Solis’s “Engage!” it would be easy to imagine Benjamin Franklin’s famous political drawing “Join, or Die,” depicting a snake cut up in to pieces redrawn some 258 years later and retitled “Engage, or die!”

 

Solis would have you believe, and correctly so, that if you do not properly join the pieces of your digital puzzle, you are destined for digital death. In the redrawn version (adapted above by my great friend Katherine), each section of the snake no longer represents a colony, but a space in the digital landscape. (We learned from Solis’s Conversation Prism that there are far more then eight pieces in the digital landscape, but as we learned from “Engage!” not all of the pieces fit into each scenario.)

Some history behind Franklin’s original drawing in the context of today’s digital world: There was an old superstition that a snake severed into pieces would regenerate if the pieces were brought back together before sunset. While Franklin was making a clear statement about the importance of colonial unity against British authoritarianism, the same principle could be applied to today’s digital landscape: Join the pieces together to build cohesiveness, or be crushed by others who already have. Same goes for your clients’ online existence, according to Solis.

The conversational style of “Engage!” made it both a quick and…engaging…read. I am conflicted, though, and I cannot exactly put my finger on why. On one hand, the book does a fantastic job of explaining trends and technology, and providing tangible examples of real-world clients implementing them. He lays out what he calls rules of engagement, talks about the importance of brands, and gives a lot of great helpful hints. On the other hand, Solis makes it sound so damn easy: read this book, pick the pieces of the Prism that apply to your business, implement them well, and PRESTO! You’ll be successful. I have found it to be much more difficult than that.

It is entirely possible that my uneasiness of this book stems from my work. I don’t work in the for-profit industry, the target audience of “Engage!” (subtitled: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web). I work for a large global health non-profit organization, and while many of the tools Solis describes are free, there is a great cost that comes with implementing strategy and keeping content coordinated and fresh.

We deal with major budgetary constraints that create capacity issues. For instance, our limited marketing budget means we cannot hire staff or purchase increasingly expensive monitoring and measurement tools (Radian6, one of the preeminent tools in social media measurement, no longer costs $50/month like it did a few years ago, it now runs hundreds of dollars a month—there are free tools available, but I haven’t found one that does a great, even good, job of comprehensive measurement).

As I read, I was trying to envision how my client, charity: water (lower case is intentional), also a non-profit, would have implemented the tactics laid out by Solis. In my opinion, New Media Uniersity 901 (Chapter 12) is the most important chapter in Engage! For a non-profit organization whose success is contingent upon private fundraising there is an incredible importance in being able to define a brand persona (p. 103) that potential donors can gravitate to.

Each of the pieces of the Brand Reflection Cycle that Solis introduces helps to paint that picture. charity: water has an incredibly compelling story and a mission that is easily digestible – clean water for the one billion people that don’t currently have access to it. Being able to tell the story is tantamount to their success – and empowering their passionate staff to help is a great assist.  It seems that an organization that successfully addresses these factors and answers the questions—what is unique about our brand? What is our mission? Give people a reason to connect and share—has done the difficult part. The narrative path to success exists, it is just a matter of coordinating the outreach effort.

As a consumer of charitable stories and charitable giver, I think about the characteristics of a charity that I would want to donate to: Does it have a mission I believe in? Are they transparent about their work and business model? Do they inspire me to want to tell other people about them?  I do not have a great deal of money to donate, so I weigh these and other factors when deciding what causes to donate to to. I consider myself a brand ambassador for charity: water, I have followed them for years and mention them as an example of a forward-thinking organization to anyone interested. I tweet about them, share their content across my own personal networks, and forward their emails to friends when I get them. I do these things because they have done a fantastic job of establishing an online identity that is easy to care about.

So should you read “Engage!”? Yes. Overall, it is definitely a worthwhile read and I would encourage anyone in the field who has not read it to do so. Much of what Solis writes about has become common knowledge if you’re in the field, or pay attention to trends within it, but he adds great context and real-world examples that make it incredibly easy to digest.

One thing I would love to see is Solis switch gears and write a non-profit “new web” playbook for non-profit organizations. He is clearly one of the most respected minds in digital media—I have subscribed to his blog feed for years—issue a new version of his book targeted at non-profit groups trying to effectively employ new media campaign.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about “Engage!” or about this post. I look forward to our conversation.