Social Media Primer & Best Practices

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Examples

• Facebook• YouTube• Myspace• Twitter• Del.icio.us• Digg• Etc…

Why You Should Care

• eMarketer estimates by 2011 one-half of all Internet users will use social networking regulary.

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Why You Should Care

• It’s not just for kids– In 2008, 43% of the U.S. adult population used

online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011.

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Why You Should Care

• It’s still a lot of teens though– 77% of US teens today use social networks– The is expect to grow to 84% by 2011.

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Why You Should Care

• Advertising Spend– $2.1 Billion spent on social media in 2008– $4.1 Billion social media spend by 2011

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What is Social Media?

• Social Network• User Generated Content (UGC)• Social Bookmarking

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Social Network

• Online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

• Examples: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut

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User Generated Content (UGC)

• Or Consumer Generated Media (CGM)

• Defined: Media content that is publicly available and produced by end-users (user).

• Usually supported by a social network• Examples: Blogs, Micro-blogs, YouTube video,

Flickr photos, Wiki content, Facebook wall posts, Second Life…

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Social Bookmarking• A method for Internet users to store, organize, search,

and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

• Based on communities; – The more people who bookmark a piece of content, the more

value it is determined to have.

• Examples: Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Reddit,

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Social Media Principles

• Who you are– Personalization

• Who you knows– Brows network

• What you do– Provide activity stream

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twitter.com

Why Twitter works?Asking why twitter works?

Time

Facebook.com News / Live FeedTime

plurk.com

There is some semanticsThere is some semantics

TimeTime

Generate an activity stream

• Automatic– Google History, Google Analytics

• Blog• Micro-blog– Twitter, yammer, identi.ca

• Mailing groups– Google groups

• Social network tools– Facebook, Digg, FriendFeed

Google GroupsTime

Time

Share activity stream

• Web pages– Twitter, Facebook, friendFeed…

• email• Sms– twitter

• IM– Twitter…

• RSS Feeds

RSS Feed

List of ItemsList of Items

With a time stampWith a time stamp

Time

friendfeed.comTime

Aggregate your Life stream From different sources

- Twitter- Blog- Facebook- Digg…

Process activity streaming

• Overwhelming amount of information– Need for abstraction

• Collaborative analysis• Automatic formatting

Netvibes.com

RSS Feedaggregation

Read

Google Reader

RSS Feedaggregation

Read

Google share itemsRSS Feedsyndication

Read

Share

Pipes.yahoo.com

- Advanced Filter- Advanced syndication

Automatic Feed processing:

Time

Time

Time

Abstraction

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Modeling processRaw data

Find a semantic

Infer higher-level symbols

Find patterns of interest

Analysis

ActivityTime

Use social medias

to improve your online presence

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Tactics for Any Budget• Host a blog• Participate on industry leading blogs and

conversations• Host or sponsor a podcast• Host/participate on discussion boards• Try Viral video• Create a group on a social network• Run media on a social network• Add social bookmarking links to your content

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Best Practices 1/3

• Attempt to leverage an existing social networks.– Examples: Facebook: Target, Facebook: RedBullU, Facebook: PINK,

Facebook NBA• Avoid creating your own network surrounding your brand:

– Examples: mycoke.com, usatoday, joga.com• Experiment with creating networks catering to specific

audiences or special interests, not brands• Listen and study the community before you enter the

discussion• Converse and don’t shout• Be prepared to relinquish control of the brand• Be honest and transparent about your involvement• Learn through experimentation

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Best practices 2/3(Source: http://wiki.opensocial.org/)

• Engage quickly– Provide value within 30 seconds

• Mimic look and feel– Look like the hosting website

• Enable Self Expression– Personalization

• Make it dynamic– Keep showing new stuff

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Best practices 3/3• Expose friend activity– Show what friends are doing

• Browse the graph– Let people explore their friends and friends of friends

• Drive communication– Provide commenting features

• Build communities– Expose different axes of similarity

• Solve real work tasks– Leverage people's social connections to solve real

problems

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Trends

• The services you are connected to are connecting with each other.– API’s make MashUps possible

• www.flickrvision.com

– Watch for the OpenSocial API Standard

• Watch for more mobile integration

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