Social Media Optimization - Architecting Participation

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Notes on slide 1

web/marketing 1.0 = east germany. loudspeaker. the architecture is pretty simple: add bullhorns wherever the people are and turn the volume up to 11. the on/off switch is under lock and key.

audience role: use hearing protection

web/marketing 2.0 = western europe & usa. two (or more) -way, ad-hoc communication. architecture is a little more complex, either/any party can “reach out” or hang up

don’t despair if you’re organization is the DDR right now. architectures can be augmented. and hacked. you don’t necessarily need to do a total tear-down, rebuild from scratch

louis kahn created architecture to enable aspirational goals (democracy) wildly out of touch with facts on the ground at the time of design and begin of construction. if you do have the opportunity to build something new, d/n mean you have to build for where you’re at. you can build for where you aspire to be

Rohit does social media for Ogilvy. Smart guy

Rohit built his rules a few years ago: still relevant to the present day and still not “best practice”. My friend Marta Strickland at Organic says Social is a conversation, not particularly suited to being systematized into best practices. But still ... some of us could use some guidelines and many of us haven’t got this list nailed as yet

I’d like to walk you through some information architecture elements and interventions that can assist with implementing the 5 rules

Rohit’s original context around this = create linkbait. But from an IA standpoint, being link-able can be or is a function of the architecture of the site’s software and the organization of its content relative to addresses or URI/URL. Example: try sending a link to this event’s details to somebody

Inforum’s site suffers from structural, architectural flaws w/r/t organizing and presenting content in an addressable fashion. The same link on another user’s computer = no content.

If you wanted to send a link to your friend or your loved one so they can see bikes at Meijer you can do so and it’s pretty easy for a computer. But what about for a human? Why not meijer.com/bikes ? The architect didn’t build that in. The engineers wanted to use the structural element of web page URLs to make the software’s job easier. But it didn’t need to be like that.

Check out BabyJogger.com doing this right. Memorable, human-usable address scheme for the things we’d like to be linked

Here’s an example of how an architecture of participation can be superimposed upon a pre-existing structure. “Chicklets” alongside of or beneath articles and other bits of content make it alot easier to share. And if you don’t understand what those “chicklets” are for or mean ... no problem

Tags are a specie of “metadata” - information about information. By giving merchants and users the ability to create an unlimited variety of tags, participation is increased. Fixed categories are the loudspeakers. Tags are the telephone. Tagging is front-and-center at Etsy, buried on Amazon. Giving users control... but how much?

Sometimes, making social too easy undermines the marketer or consumer’s interest. My company used to get a ton of very helpful and insightful comments when we posted videos to FB. But ever since FB introduced an easier way to “participate” through the i like feature, we’re getting far fewer comments.

There are plenty of free software tools that allow you to see who’s linking to your site. Sometimes the architecture of participation requires manual intervention, e.g. vigilance to notice and reward new links. The architecture around this spans both digital and meatspace

Who recognizes this icon? RSS: really simple stealing. RSS is a technology that can be quickly and easily built onto onsite search and other automagical pieces of functionality which create listings of products and content. When paired with a content creation strategy sometimes referred to as “microchunking”, your stuff can go places your site can’t.

If you’re uncomfortable with allowing your content to go wherever it might like to and refuse to create architectures for syndicating it, users might just do it on their own e.g. The Daily Show a few years ago was user-scraped into bootlegged feeds

a microchunking content strategy that’s enabled by architectures such as RSS separates “my stuff” from “my site”. which may not be a bad thing

One of the most critical pieces of website functionality for B2C brick-and-mortar businesses is store locator. Biggby locks this info down - the architecture of their locator is not the architecture of participation.

Exposing the info that powers an onsite app like locator enables participation by brand ambassadors and robot spiders alike. Starbucks is here... TimHortons is here... where’s Biggby?

Here’s a quick summary of some of the points I made vis-a-vis architectures to implement Bhargava’s 5 rules

These slides are linked from my website and are on slideshare. I’m also on twitter.

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Sebastian Deterding, User Experience Designer & Game Researcher at Gruner + Jahr, favorited this 1 month ago

Social Media Optimization - Architecting Participation - Presentation Transcript

Social Media Optimization architecting participation inFORUM West Michigan // Social Media in Action dan klyn
as Amazon demonstrates, by consistent effort it is possible to overlay such an architecture on a system that would not normally seem to possess it. The Architecture of Participation, Tim O’Reilly
The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches, and more frequently included in relevant posts [in social media] 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization, Rohit Bhargava
Bhargavaʼs 5 Rules of SMO • Increase Your Linkability • Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy • Reward Inbound Links • Help Your Content Travel • Encourage Mashups http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html
information architecture for implementing Bhargavaʼs 5 rules
increase linkability
make tagging and bookmarking easy
reward inbound links
help your content travel
encourage mashups
Architecting Participation • Increase Your Linkability by optimizing, tailoring URLs • Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy by displaying chicklets, surfacing meta-data • Reward Inbound Links through reporting/vigilance • Help Your Content Travel via microchunking strategy + RSS • Encourage Mashups via contests, demo/prototypes, submittals
For More Information http://danklyn.com @danklyn thanks