Engagement

Any sign a person is paying attention, from a pause to a share. Worth watching, easy to fake, dangerous to worship.

Engagement is a proxy, and proxies drift. A pause can be interest or confusion; a share can be admiration or mockery; a comment can be love or a complaint queue. The number says someone reacted. It is silent on whether the reaction moved anyone toward trust.

Watch it as weather, not as harvest. Engagement tells you which work is alive, worth knowing early. But the moment it becomes the goal, the work bends toward what provokes rather than what persuades, and the brand trains its audience to expect noise. Optimise for the memory left, and let engagement report on it.