What a Ferry Wedding Taught Me About Social Media

Every social media report I've ever written leads with engagement rate. Likes, comments, shares, clicks. It's the number everyone wants to see go up, and I look at it every day too.

But after twenty-plus years in marketing, I think engagement rate is just the receipt. The good stuff happened before anyone tapped the heart.

Everyone's shouting

People scroll past hundreds of posts a day. Most of them are forgettable. The ones that stop me aren't the ones with the cleverest hashtags. They're the ones that sound like a real person.

Ferries and Crickets

Years ago I helped run a promotion where you could eat a cricket and get a free ticket. It was weird, fun, gross; take your pick. It also got people laughing, filming, and talking about it.

I've hung 10,000 orange lights on a mini-golf course and watched sales triple that month - in the off-season, mind you. I've organized a wedding on a ferry.

None of it was really about the crickets, the lights, or the boat. It was about giving people something to do together and a story to tell afterward. That's what they remember, and it's what brings them back.

What I try to do

Nothing fancy here:

• Write to one real person, not "our audience."

• Be useful or be fun, and ideally both.

• Answer comments like you're happy someone took the time.

• Give people something to take part in, not just something to scroll.

• Say it plainly.

  
  

Keep the numbers, keep going

I'm not telling anyone to ignore the data. Engagement rate tells you something. It just doesn't tell you everything, and the missing part is whether people feel connected to you.

So next time you're going through a report, add one more question: are people coming back because they want to, or because we asked?

People aren't short on content. They're short on connection.