Today: Organizations and corporations focus on bringing listeners IN to the brand via sharing messages, gaining followers, and continuing the public relations crusade.

Tomorrow: Organizations outsource their media campaigns to their top followers, sometimes for a reward.

This is the next wave of social media strategy.

Instead of engagement, we have outgagement. This isn’t a ‘new’ phenomenon, in fact it is one that is already occurring at a lightning pace.  A small business shares a great deal, and a Twitter follower shares it with 50 friends, and they share it with their friends, and so on.  Getting people to listen is engagement. But getting people to share your message and advertise for you – that’s outgagement.

So how do they do it? How do we move from getting customers to care to getting them to share? It’s an interesting question and one that I feel like has its roots in the Social Media movement already.  Human beings are hardwired to share helpful information, almost pathologically so.  To capitalize on this tendency, all an organization really needs to do is give followers information worth sharing!  This is more difficult than it sounds, of course.  How do you know what your followers want to hear? And how do you take that engagement to the next level, so that followers feel compelled to share with their friends (and anyone else who is listening)?

I’m developing a ‘rules of the road’ for Outgagement, which I’ll be happily sharing over the next few weeks.  With a detailed plan, I believe any organization can step up their game and outgage!