What will you build when you engage your audience?

I’m hearing social media being described more and more as a channel these days, the implication being that it’s being thought of as a one-way path to a market.

But what opportunities are missed when you fail to engage with customers, when you take the social out of social media?

I’m going to pick on CBC Radio 1′s The Current a little bit here. It’s not because they’re the only media outlet or business that’s failing to take full advantage of social media or because they’re the worst case. It’s mainly because they’re close at hand — I’m a regular listener so I’m really familiar with what they do on-air as well as online. And I should say, to, that I have HUGE respect for the journalism work that they do. In fact, I’d like for more people to be exposed to it.

Anyway, last week someone The Current was interviewing on-air as a subject matter expert repeatedly made a factual error, referring to WikiMedia as being responsible for publishing the controversial WikiLeaks Web site (they’re not, as both organizations are careful to point out). It was wrong and a potentially dangerous mis-statement given the nebulous legal status of WikiLeaks and so I contacted the producers via Twitter.

What happened next? Nothing. @TheCurrentCBC kept pushing out their same 3 tweets a day — early morning promo for the upcoming show, promo for the podcast, promo for tomorrow’s show.

What could have happened? They could have addressed it in some way. Even if they’d said, “Hey, it’s live radio. People sometimes trip on their tongues.  Get over it,” it would have been huge. It would have felt like someone was listening and cared about the accuracy of their reports. I would have been totally SOLD on the The Current.

But I’m just one guy and this is just one example. Let’s zoom out and see what the impact is on a broader scale.

@TheCurrentCBC currently has just over 3,000 followers. They generally get @ mentioned once or twice a day. That’s a huge under-perform for a media outlet with daily, prime-time international reach. And in more general terms, the show is virtually unknown outside of Canada even though their work stands up with the best in the world.

Let’s look, by contrast at The Guardian, the publishing outfit that’s gone from being a semi-obscure lefty English newspaper to being one of the world’s dominant media brands. And they’ve done it largely through a strategy of openness and engagement. Their UK Politics Twitter account (@GdnPolitics) has nearly 10,000 followers — that’s just one account out of dozens (their news feed has over 75,000 followers) A single one of the Guardian’s columnists, @JanineGibson, has nearly as many followers as @TheCurrentCBC.

The difference is The Guardian’s Twitter people engage online. They ReTweet, they reply, they get in the mix. They’ve built an audience, they’ve built loyalty, they’ve built a global brand all on top of engaging their audience.

What will you build when you engage your audience?