Without engagement, social media ultimately fails. However, you can design your social media activities to create online engagement, which is the focus on my presentation. The conference presentation covered five core concepts about how to design real online engagement for the highest return on engagement: numbers do not equal return on engagement, you can design social media activities for real engagement, how to leverage relationship ties organizationally to convert fans to superfans (and increase ROE), aligning SMART goals with engagement design, and three approaches to measuring ROE: community commitment, fan trust, and SMART goal achievement.

How do you explain social media to the public, no matter what their level of understanding? This was the issue we faced crafting an "overview" of social media. From this experience, I offer five basic ideas that you have to utilize in order to convey the concept of social media effectively.