Delivered at SMX Social Media 2014, this presentation explores the user social sharing behavior and how to craft a user experience that capitalizes on user preference for social search.

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2. Landscape: what does recent research tell us about social media usage
Social Media and Search: what influence does social media behavior have on organic search
Social (search) Behavior: yes, another form of SEO to think about
The UX of Social Media: whether you design for it or not, users will have an experience on your site that can have a positive or negative impact on your client’s bottom line. The choice is up to you.
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4. Universal McCann Social Wave 7 (2013) What has dropped off over the last 5 years is:
•read blogs down (niche specific behavior)
•leave comment on blog (most have discontinued due to spam)
•start a blog (like puppies, care and feeding get in the way),
•uploading photos (b/c of camera and tablet phones and advent of super device storage
•insecurity about cloud maybe)
•listen to radio online.
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5. Brand community membership went up over 20%. Why?
Hubspot 2010 survey
67% of US twitter users are more likely to buy from Brands that they follow
42% use twitter to learn about product/services
41% to provide opinions on products/services
31% to ask for opinions about product/services
28% to look for discounts/sales
21% to purchase products/services
19% to seek customer support
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6. They want an “inside source” for information on the brand and advance news
They share because they want their network to support their decision to declare for the brand or someone influential in their network encouraged them.
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7. No doubt that mobile is growing. However, it is not at the expense of desktop or laptop usage.
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9. 70% of the top ranking factors are social signals
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15. Paul Adams Designing for Social Interaction, Boxes and Arrows, April 2010
Strong Ties: support existing means of interaction instead of providing a new one (text, email, phone). Avoid generic labels like “friends” as that overpopulates group and diminishes relevance. Of the 470+ “friends” I have on FB, how many are really friends?
Weak Ties: trust a factor, they may know more about certain things but are trusted less, show shared ties or expose sources of knowledge to increase trust
Granovetter: weak ties better source of information due to expanse of circle - strong ties are usually grouped together
Temporary Ties: Twitter followers would be temporary ties
Temporary tie is a single or small group of interaction, generally around information need or shared interest (forums) (ask person on street for directions, Google or Yahoo answers, Quora) - also task completion: Most do not treat all social channels or connections within the channel the same support established strong tie communication, not replace with own messaging system
Design for
•Build system for increasing reputation.
•Allow feedback on one another
•Build trust: show shared connections, groups or interests (LinkedIn)
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16. Pareto Principal with regard to social networks: Facebook research shows that most action on social networks occurs within a small subset of connections
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
864 million daily active users on average for September 2014
703 million mobile daily active users on average for September 2014
1.35 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2014
1.12 billion mobile monthly active users as of September 30, 2014
Approximately 82.2% of our daily active users are outside the US and Canada
User Interactions in Social Networks and their Implications, Wilson et al. 2009
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17. Sometimes use social network for information seeking by posing questions there = Social Search
Directed: person to person, e.g. Direct message or pointed to specific entity
Public: “can anyone…?”
Searching repositories: niche specific, wide net: e.g. quora question and answer
For Asia = more questions of professional nature, fewer rhetorical inquiries
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18. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/teevan/publications/papers/chi10-social.pdf
50.6% have used status message to ask questions.
Trustworthy sources
Query too subjective for a search engine
Search engine is too hard
Want a specific audience
Men: technology questions, women : home/family
Young: more invitation questions, less like to ask recommendation questions
“reading through search results is too cumbersome”
Question types are:
Recommendation most popular
Factual knowledge
Rhetorical
Invitation
Favors
Social Connection (does anyone know someone who…)
Offer
What Do People Ask Their Social Networks and Why? A Survey Study of Status Message Q&A Behavior
Meredith Ringel Morris, Jamie Teevan, Katrina Panovich
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19. Intrinsic vs Image-Related Utility in Social media: Why do People Contribute Content to Twitter: Toubia and Stephan 2013
Intrinsic: the poster derives a direct benefit specific to the content
Image-Related: individual receives an increase in stature to others – e.g. more followers (followers need to be earned, so this is an informative social signal and posting is a means to this end)
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20. It is no a requirement: Apple has NO SOCIAL MEDIA access on its website
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21. Most common placement is upper right corner of site chrome, right next to the most popular girl in school Search. That takes them off the page. If they don’t need search, they rarely look/click in upper right corner.
Global and footer locations do not get user attention because on the basis of what would they want to follow you?
Make the invitation less generic
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22. Zipf’s Law of least effort
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24. Coca Cola FB post Sept 27, 2014
Users like to share motivational, feel-good messages
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25. http://mashable.com/2014/11/12/user-experience-tips/
UX is not just about Interfaces
UX touches the product itself, not just the promotion
Experience happens anyway – you only get to design whether you’ll design for it
UX uses multiple research approaches
UX will subsume much of what currently counts as digital marketing
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26. This is more about expectation that content quality. 6 tweets would indicate that this was not a widely appreciated post.
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29. http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2014/24641/three-traits-of-shareworthy-content
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30. Based on what and why?
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31. Online Product Opinions: Incidence, Evaluation, and Evolution
Wendy W. Moe, David A. Schweidel,2014
"positive ratings environments increase posting incidence, whereas negative ratings environments discourage posting. Our results also indicate important differences across individuals in how they respond to previously posted ratings, with less frequent posters exhibiting bandwagon behavior and more active customers revealing differentiation behavior”
"Schlosser (2005) also showed in a lab environment that posters adjust their product evaluations depending on the opinions expressed by others. As these studies demonstrate, a ratings environment can take on a life of its own, sometimes to the detriment of the product or brand to which it is dedicated. In some cases, the posted content provides a fair evaluation of the product or brand. However, as illustrated in the aforementioned studies, posted content can also reflect the influence of others.“
"First, previously posted ratings may affect the incidence with which individuals choose to contribute their own opinions, which we refer to as a selection effect. Second, whereas some customers may prefer to provide their comments such that they will stand out from the crowd, others may prefer to be consistent with the majority. Thus, in addition to selection effects, there may also be adjustment effects where those individuals who ultimately decide to post revise their evaluations upward or downward based on previously posted comments."
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32. Hubspot 2010 survey
67% of US twitter users are more likely to buy from Brands that they follow
42% use twitter to learn about product/services
41% to provide opinions on products/services
31% to ask for opinions about product/services
28% to look for discounts/sales
21% to purchase products/services
19% to seek customer support
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34. Jared Spool
51,000 followers
39,000 tweets (a good many poking @united)
When asked why he continues to use United, he responded that it has be best service offerings out of Boston (where he lives).
The IA tweet sparked a conversation that included many luminaries in the field offering suggestions.
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36. Inlinks: If a blog post has a large number of inlinks, then it is more likely to be influential.
Discussion: The influence of a blog post could depend on the amount of discussion it initiated.
Little or no discussion = did not arouse others' interests or their contents were not appealing.
Large number of comments indicates that the particular blog post affects many people so they care to write comments.
External References: If a blog post refers to many articles or other blog posts, it is less likely to be an innovative piece
Keller and Berry have listed innovativeness as an essential property of being influential in a physical community.
The number of outlinks reflects how innovative a blog post is.
Content Quality: An influential blog post is often well written., i.e. eloquent, descriptive, logical, insightful, authoritative, rhetoric, relatively self-contained.
The length of a blog post (¸) is a heuristic measure checking if post is influential or not
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37. 43 comments
120 FB likes
2045 twitter shares
200 G+ shares
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38. Should be more than just placing SM icons on each page (why would anyone share a travel insurance form TY page - SmashingMag)
Social web tools must incorporate the concepts of strong (care deeply about) and weak ties (loose connections)
Most have less than 10 strong ties = circle of truest
Current designs are too egalitarian...treats all content the same
Consider trade off between communication and trust
Ease of exposing network to people they trust
Rationalize the action: not just follow us on FB but follow us on FB to get [fill in blank]
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