social media features & community building
DESCRIPTION
A look at social software in terms of developing relationships, message distribution, and peer to peers community building.TRANSCRIPT
SMEI
October 14, 2009.
AGENDA
• Discuss and understand social software tools in terms of features.
• Understand the relationship that features have to your goals by introducing a framework for thinking about them.
• Apply some core features to the framework and see what comes out the other side.
• Discuss current practices and find out what is working.
The Framework
When adopting a piece of social software, use the following framework
to think about its features.
1. How does the feature enable the distribution of your value proposition?
2. How does the feature allow the brand to develop relationships with customers?
3. How does the feature enable community building among peers?
4. How does the feature allow brands to identify and aggregate relevant conversations?
How does the feature enable the distribution of your value proposition?Feature Description
Tweet A tweet is a 140 character update that answers the question “How can I make my customer’s life better?”
Retweet A behavior where one user’s tweet is tweeted again from someone else. The RT convention is a symbol of attribution.
Tiny URLs Since tweets are limited to 140 characters, shortened URLs let brands direct their followers to blog posts, reviews, and video clips about your product.
SMS Customers can choose to receive your tweets over SMS directly to their mobile phones.
How does the feature allow the brand to develop relationships with customers?
Feature Description
@Reply Any Twitter update that begins with a username. The update will appear in that person’s @ replies tab.
Mentions @ replies have merged into Mentions. If your brand appears in a tweet, you’ll find it along Twitter’s sidebar.
Following Following allows the brand to subscribe to the tweets of its customers so that they appear in the company timeline.
Direct Message
A DM is a private message also limited to 140 characters.
How do brands find and aggregate conversations using the service?Feature Description
Trending Popular conversations on Twitter.
Hashtags (#)
Hashtags are used to aggregate tweets around topics. Tweets can later be sorted or organized by their hashtag.
Search Method of retrieving indexed tweets via Twitter’s keyword search tool.
Favorites Feature that allows a Twitter user to mark or save a tweet so that it can be referred to later.
Persistent RSS
The RSS feed for a Twitter search can be used with a feed reader like Google Reader.
The Framework
Facebook and Twitter are quite different. We revised the framework to
allow for these differences. (search & community building)
1. How can the brand develop relationships with customers? (brand to customer or fan)
2. How does the feature amplify or distribute the brand’s value proposition? (brand to customer or fan)
3. How do brands engage in community building? (fan to fan)
How can the brand develop relationships with customers? (brand to fan)
Feature Description
Wall Post When the page’s owner posts to the wall
Comments from Fans The ability for fans to leave comments on blog posts
Messaging followers Messages from the page’s owner directed to the fans.
How does the feature amplify/distribute the brand’s value proposition? (brand to fan)
Feature Description
Subscribe via SMS Subscribe to the page’s content via a mobile phone.
Suggest a Friend Your fans’ friends will receive a suggestion to become fan of your business page.
Add to my page’s favorites
The ability to add a Facebook page as a favorite.
Biz to fan photo album
When the business posts photo album.
Events Events like product launches, conferences.
Profile Relevant company information and contacts details.
How does the feature allow fans to engage in community building? (fan to fan)
Feature Description
Like When a fan signals interest in a piece of content
Fan fan comments
When fans interact with each other via comments
Become a fan When fans join a page
Fan wall posts When a fan is able to post to the business page’s wall
Fan photo albums When a fan is able to post photos to the page’s photo galleries.
Fan videos When a fan is able to post videos to the page’s photo galleries.
Why does this matter?
1. Twitter and Facebook are two very different tools.
2. They have features that lend themselves to relationship building, content distribution, community development, and aggregation.
3. As marketers, we already have powerful distribution tactics like email marketing and press releases.
4. What we don’t have is a surplus of tools to really connect with our customers and fans.