Before the internet made everything measurable, we created content with blind faith. We hoped it would find its intended audience.
Now if someone doesn’t click, like, or share, we wonder: did our message really land?
While we’ve been trained by social media apps to register our emotions online, I still think there’s a percentage of content that people are reading but not reacting to—or reacting to without really reading. You get through the first two paragraphs of an eight-paragraph post and “like” what you read, so it’s almost like the like bookmarks it for later.
Quiet consumption
We’ve trained ourselves to see engagement as equaling impact, but plenty of valuable content gets consumed quietly. The executive who screenshots your strategy post for their team meeting. The colleague who implements your advice without commenting. The client who bookmarks your insight for the right moment.
I recently went back to find a post that had resonated. I had wanted to read more of it at the time, but I was in the middle of looking for something specific and didn’t want to get distracted. Noting the author and topic, a couple of weeks later I went back to find it.
Repeat consumers
My “like” had suggested I read it, but my return confirmed that I liked it. I also took the time to post a comment on the author’s LinkedIn to let him know I thought his insights were valuable.
I think this unmeasurable measurement deserves broader acknowledgment within the communications ecosystem—maybe it will have to wait until mind-clicking is invented as a metric. Kidding, kidding…
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