Inbound Social Media Engagement vs. Outbound Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement is the measurement of public likes, comments, and shares. Most people understand what social media engagement means, but few know that there are two types of social media engagement.

• Inbound social media engagement  
• Outbound social media engagement

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Inbound Social Media Engagement

What is inbound social media engagement?

Inbound social media engagement refers to the practice of responding to consumers who have communicated with a brand on social media. For instance, whenever a customer mentions your brand in a comment and probably asks a questions, or when a visitor enquires about a product you shared on social media, your response to them is what is referred to as inbound social media marketing. other means of practicing inbound social media engagement is answering questions via webinars and blog posts.

It is an important practice because it will:

• Pull your audience to you since you are giving them all the information they are looking for in regards to your brand.  
• Encourage your audience to keep engaging with your brand.

According to Frost and Sullivan (2016), “a complete outbound customer engagement strategy must support an Omni channel environment across the customer journey, including voice, dialer, text, email, and push notifications. Plus, it must deliver easy-to-use list, compliance, and campaign-management capabilities that enable organizations to easily customize a variety of proactive customer communications campaigns covering everything from real-time alerts to renewal notices to customer surveys.”  

Outbound Social Media Engagement

What is outbound social media engagement?

Outbound social media engagement is the practice of interacting with clients or customer's content. Outbound social media engagement is the opposite of inbound social media engagement, it is when you go out to reach out people who love your brand. Here, your brand will seek out the audience and interact with their favorite content. For instance, taking part in a popular hashtag or meme.

This practice is important because:

• As a brand you will be able to form more real and stronger relations with your audience.
• It will help reach more of your target audience and grow your follower list.

Reference  

Frost & Sullivan (2016). Outbound engagement: Change the conversation by proactively communicating with customers. A Frost & Sullivan White Paper. https://epicconnections.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Frost_and_Sullivan_Outbound_Engagement_Genesys.pdf

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