A few weeks back there was a new report that was written dubbed “ENGAGEMENTdb” that looked a little further into social media participation.  We’ve been watching this closely as we often time include engagement as one of our metrics we watch for our clients as opposed to simply breadth (how many boxes can you check off the social media list to say your are doing them?)

To quote a summary: “What makes this report even more interesting is the correlation of engagement and financial performance. The analysis groups each brand with the greatest depth and breadth into a category titled “Social Media Mavens”. On average, those who were classified as “Social Media Mavens” grew 18% in revenue over the last 12 months. On the other hand, the companies who were least engaged with consumers on the social web unfortunately suffered an average of 6% decline in revenue.”  (credit: Altimeter Group)

This obviously is a great story to tout to our clients to show not only social media’s relationship to the bottom line, but to emphasize the need to actually use the tools you/they spent money building.  It reinforces the participatory part of social media and the payoffs that can come from it.

However, we want to put forth a corollary finding that we are actively pursuing.  If your clients are anything like ours, social media is just part of the mix.  You are playing alongside email marketing, banner advertising, pay-per-click, paid sponsorships/links and other channels that get measured with the click-through-rate (CTR) percentage.  What we’ve learned through these programs is that the higher the overall “sentiment” is for the company, the greater the CTR.

To repeat:  the more engagement there is online, and the more that engagement is positive in nature, the more likely people are to engage with other digital marketing tactics (i.e. click through to the company’s target location).

This makes logical sense to us.  If you dislike a brand, you will be less likely to click through one of their other online advertising properties.  On the contrary, if you are neutral to positive about a brand, you are more likely to click through.  Now, we are not diving into the waters of words/colors/message and placement where a purchaser is more likely to purchase.  We’re simply making a connection from sentiment to CTR.  And depending on what type of agency you are, this could either make you a great parter to the other agencies in the mix for your clients, or improve your own digital marketing tactics if you have them all under one roof.

But this outlines how important reputation online becomes.  And it brings the “online reputation management” discussion out of the the confines of corporate communications, and broadens that internal discussion to marketing and other areas within the company.

Admittedly, we have a small sample base right now.  Companies and marketers are not likely to publish their CTR percentages, so we’ve relied on our own experience, clients, experiments and those of our friends in the industry.  If you have access to CTR percentages, or if you’ve found similar results, we welcome your comments here.  Together, we can put together the next “big” finding in social media and it’s importance in the world of communications.