Steve Rubel has a great article, writing for Ad Age, in commenting on the myth of "engagement."
He asks the questions: Can anyone really define what "engagement" means? Have you seen it? He continues by saying "I Googled 'engagement marketing' and found lots of blather written on the subject. It seems to me like no one can really nail it. The closest I could come to a "definition" is the ARF's "Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context." Ahh, I get it now!"
I included this in our discussion because it confirms what we've been talking about a lot lately: the niche is the marketing. Or let me put it another way again: the community is the marketing. This is the true revolution going on in the online marketing world.
Or as we talked about last post: The offline and online worlds are becoming one. The online world has to reflect the offline world because there is no difference in them; that's the real secret. People will want to find other people no matter what type of real or virtual world we create.
What is real engagement? Helping those people find one another. The other interesting thing is that people that are helped in this way understand that someone has to pay the bills. Research is saying that they don't mind being shown ads or commercials online as long as 
they're not overtly disrupting their community interaction. In other words, don't interrupt our "engagement" with one another.
The only reason anything can go "viral," is because there is a community in the first place. The community is the marketing! Everything else comes along for the ride.
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