A Simplified Social Networking Strategy Sandro Alberti (sandro@fen-om.com), with Gavin Engel (gavin@engel.com); September- 2009
0. Introduction. Social systems (Socials) have become a popular part of doing business online: Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Twitter, etc. This plan describes how to use Socials in 5 'activities': Owner multiplying content: 1. from site→ to Social, and 2. from Social→ to site Visitor multiplying content: 3. from site→ to Social, and 4. from Social→ to site 5. Owner managing his/her existing Socials • The Four Social Types. Micro-blogging (Twitter, Friendfeed), Social Networking (Facebook, Myspace), Social Commenting (Disqus, Intense Debate), Social Bookmarking (Delicious, Digg) • Your Very Own Social. Beyond the popular Socials, it is important to note that it is possible to create your own ‘customized’ Socials. A personalized Social Network can be created using Ning. And you can use StatusNet to create your own Micro-blog. 1. “We post our own data to Socials”. Posting to many Socials at once is relatively simple. This typically includes Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, and Twitter. However, it is important to establish a strong Social presence. Even though content can easily be posted from a multi-posting tool, a local Social audience can only be obtained through focused time and effort. • Multi-Posting Tools. In some cases, the Socials themselves provide ways to multi-post to multiple locations. Facebook, for example, provides an application that duplicates your Facebook posts as tweets in your Twitter account. Usually, however, it is best to use a 3rd party application to take care of the multi-posting; like TweetDeck, for example. TweetDeck focuses exclusively on the ways we connect to Socials, while leaving Socials to focus on content • Micro-Post, Rich-Post. When posting to multiple profiles, it is best to scale the size of the post down to the lowest common denominator (the ‘micro-post’). We have found that, typically, this is a photo-less post consisting of 140 characters or less (the restriction of the popular Twitter platform). Anything formatted that way will be able to appear on Twitter as well as more complex Socials such as Facebook. Posting a longer, ‘richer’ paragraph (the ‘rich-post’), can appear on Facebook, but will not transfer well to Twitter. Now, there is actually a use for both of these types of posts, and you should take advantage of both: If you want to reach your entire audience with a general message, use a micro-post. However, if you want to strengthen your core Facebook, Myspace, or Linkedin audience, provide them exclusively with interesting, ‘rich’ posts that include images and maybe even video. 2. “We add social data into our site”. We will sometimes want to add information to our site from Socials. This is relatively easy and completely automatic, through the use of feeds such as RSS, iCAL, or an OpenAPI. • RSS. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has become very popular in the last few years. Typically, news sites provide RSS streams that can be read by any modern browser and a whole range of RSS readers. With our help, your site can not only bring in automatically-updated RSS content, but also output their own, that others may subscribe to. As far as Socials are concerned, RSS content is also readily available to bring their content into your Web site.
• iCAL. iCAL also ‘streams’, allowing calendars to share information. Calendars from Socials can update calendars in your Web site, in real time. • OpenAPI. An open API is a more powerful way to ‘stream’ information from Socials into a Web site. API stands for Application Programming Interface, and an Open API essentially ‘opens’ the programming structure of a Social for other Web sites to use. Since an Open API is so vast in extent and performance, it is used not only for bringing your own content into your Web site, but also allowing visitors to do so (and allowing them to create a social network in your Web site; see Section 3). Twitter is well known for developing an OpenAPI that has allowed 3rd-party providers to develop Twitter tools that are more complex than the original itself. 3. “Visitors add social data into our site”. Many sites allow visitors to add content. This content might be comments, stories, pictures, videos, links, etc. Socials can be leveraged to further this goal. • Socials API. Some Socials, notably Facebook, have developed specific features of their API to allow their community to participate within your Web site (Facebok Connect). This allows, not only for Facebook content to appear in your site, but also allows for more complex aspects of social networking. For example, visitors can log in to Facebook, carry on a threaded Facebook conversation, and include content, all within your Web site. Essentially, the power of Facebook is used to enhance your own site assets. Popularized recently by the NBAs streaming of all-star games: www.tnt.tv/sports/nba/allstar09/fb/register.jsp www.tnt.tv/sports/nba/allstar09/fb/sunday.jsp?view=shootingstars Warner Bros. uses Facebook Connect on DVD: www.engadgethd.com/2009/05/12/warner-uses-facebook-to-sync-up-watchmen-bd-live-viewing-session Prototype Experiment brings users’ Facebook data into a video game: www.prototype-experience.com • Commenting Systems. In the last few years, commenting systems such as Disqus and Intense Debate. Primarily, they are tools that take care of your commenting threads in their own servers. This is useful to relieve server load, and you can count on them staying up to date with the latest anti-spam. On their end, these systems are also developing social networks of members that might stumble upon your content with interest. These commenting systems even allow for commenting to be posted to Socials. Disqus: www.disqus.com Sample use of Disqus on Keepcomingback.com: www.keepcomingback.com/node/3258 4. “Visitors post our data to their Socials”. To allow visitors to post data to their own social profiles, and also to social bookmark sites, you can add ‘Social Links’ embed code to your Web pages. Some Social API indirectly shares content back to the Socials as well. • Socials API. As seen in section 3, some Socials API allows for their content to be included in your Web site. At the same time a copy is also maintained at the Social site. So, in a way, the API integration is effectively posting your data to the Socials, where it might be found by others, leading them back to your site. This is exactly what happens with Facebook Live Conversation.
• Social Links. The ShareThis widget has become a powerful way to embed links to all main Social sites in one compact button: http://sharethis.com Other creative variations can be developed, such as Mashable’s Drag-to-Share widget: http://mashable.com/2009/02/15/facebook-nba/ 5. “We manage our friends”. In becoming involved with Socials, it is of course important to manage followers and ‘friends’. Once set up, a regular routine should be maintained. Social networks are like gardens, you have to take care of them, or the plants will die. Social-network management involves these steps, on a day-today basis: 1. Five to ten tweets per day on Twitter (that hopefully also propagate to other Socials); there is research that goes with each tweet (one needs to determine, carefully, what is important to tweet at that time; links need to be obtained, and shortened). 2. Initiate a Linkedin/Facebook/Myspace discussion per week. 3. Post one ‘special’-rich post to major Socials (Facebook. Myspace) every couple of days. At least a wellthought-out post that is longer than the LCD (least common denominator) of 140 characters; at most an entire page-section (see #7 below; Socials landing pages). 4. Track statistics on previously posted links. From this, one determines who clicked on what, and this in turn determines action to ‘court’ that person to become a follower (if not already a follower), and action to place that follower in a particular communication group/category for future contact. 5. Take care of the site-news rss feeds (finding good links, deleting bad ones); some ten to 20 rss feed items per day. 6. Maintain social commenting in-site (social connections as well as comment filtering). 7. Develop changing ‘landing page’ content in the main Socials (Facebook, Myspace). This one takes a lot of time, involving both design and copy. 8. Provide some 10 public responses on Twitter, carefully thought out to satisfy the follower in the response, and entice everyone else to some action (Twitter rates you higher the more you respond to people). 9. Search for new followers to follow (and hope they follow back) on Twitter. Some 20 to 50 followers a day (who match the criteria of ‘follow ratio’, interest in one’s topic). This can be automated, but is much better to follow through one-by-one. Potential new followers can also be approached with highly personalized ‘appreciation’ messages (again, one-on-one, as opposed to the generic: “you’re cool; follow me everywhere”). 10. Manage subgroups in Linkedin. 11. Send out weekly-monthly announcements in main Socials (Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook), especially after updating content there. This also applies to sending group direct messages to followers on Twitter. 12. Research new tools and technologies for continuous enhancement of Social Networking (from novel 3rdparty features that might produce yet another task step, to the basic feature enhancements in any given Social: for example, on 9-10-2009 we heard that posts on Facebook would allow ‘tagging’ of friends, groups, events, applications, or other pages by simply including the @ sign before the tagged term [http://bit.ly/3bYwv ]; this led to a whole new way of posting; you now also have to research friends-groups-events-apps-pages that can enhance your posts). 6. Bonus: “We stay up-to-date”. As with anything else, the technology of Socials continues to change, adapting to our more complex needs and those of the competitive marketplace. Enjoy staying updated, especially since this field is so interesting.