The Holy Grail of Social Media Engagement

CBS imported “Love Island”, a UK reality show. It tanked in the ratings. CBS experiments with its summer dramas often leaving people very frustrated. I don’t watch it but they cancelled 3 summer dramas I did like so I wanted to see this tank. It didn’t.

Love Island didn’t have the Amazon distribution deal such dramas as Extant (Halle Berry), James Patterson’s Zoo, and Salvation (Star Trek: Picard’s Santiago Cabrera) did – which all failed and were cancelled during CBS summer seasons. It wasn’t practically paid for out of the gate by overseas distribution deals as Star Trek: Discovery was. Somehow however “Love Island” with mediocre ratings eeked out a renewal.

“The numbers for “Love Island” have been unerringly stable, which would be a good thing if they weren’t stagnating at an average of 0.51 in the key 18-49 demographic across nine episodes. Viewership has been just as poor, with roughly 2.3 million tuning in to each episode, far fewer than the network would likely have been hoping for.” (TV Ratings: Is ‘Love Island’ Deserted?, Variety July 22, 2019)

There was a silver lining that possibly got Love Island renewed: “Social media engagement is a metric that is becoming more relevant each day” was the news reported by Screen Rant.

“…With new episodes of Love Island dropping so often and uploaded clips of blossoming romance and unsettling breakups occurring regularly, the audience can feel involved in the conversation without being fully invested in every single minute of the series…” (Love Island Brought Back for Season 2 Despite Low Ratings, Screen Rant August 2, 2019)

It’s a 21st century “Who Shot J.R.” conversation. (If you’re lost head over to this Wikipediaarticle).

Each like, comment, and share on your company’s social media post is cutting thru the clutter of the Facebook timeline, causing people to stop scrolling down, and letting themselves get involved in the conversation you are having, and as they often ‘tag others’, they are showing they think the conversation you are having is worth engaging and sharing with others.

Social Media marketing and posting, if done right, is about interaction and engagement, not simply ‘broadcasting’ event or product information. Social Media is a two way communication platform. It’s ironic that the Tiffany Network, formerly known as the ‘Columbia BROADCASTING System’ has overcome broadcasting and levaraged social media to a degree that it saved an otherwise doomed series.

Is your business leveraging social media? Are you just posting everyday or are you interacting every day?

Food for thought.