Gone are the days that, as marketers, we could design and execute a marketing campaign without ever interacting with anyone. That interaction stuff was for the sales people. We were marketing people.

Although I could write quite a bit on this subject, let me just take two quick examples in seemingly unrelated areas – SEO and Lead Generation.

SEO

SEO, if that is what we call it these day (SEOMOZ renamed themselves to MOZ for a reason), is made up of about 200 factors. For the sake of this discussion, let’s just consider backlinks, since it is one of the most important SEO factors.

In the old days, we could buy links. Well Google ended that lazy-river strategy a few years ago. How do you get good quality links? One word – ‘engagement’. You literally contact the site through a personal email and ask them to link to your site. In addition, you can comment on their blog post with your URL in the comment.

Lead Generation

In reading a recent post on Social Media Examiner, I learned, without surprise, that using Social Media may almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail or PPC. (HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Annual Report). The article discusses 4 ways to use Social Media to generate leads. They are: Twitter Chats, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Advertising, Google Hangouts. What do most of these have in common? Yes – Engagement.

Online Marketing Program

The Online Marketing services at OLinks emphasizes engagement in its 5 step program. We recognize that marketing has progressed in these Social times from analysis/execute/repeat to

1. Setup
2. Post
3. Promote
4. Engage
5. Measure

Engagement is the key to being successful in Search Engine Marketing. It takes time, but it pays off.