The document outlines key principles for creating effective social media services based on insights from three years of research by Zipipop. It emphasizes understanding user sociability, developing a solid marketing strategy, and building communities rather than merely attracting users. The guidelines also cover aspects such as transparency, relevancy in communication, and the importance of a compelling value proposition.

1. 4th Draft
Social Media Agency
Building Successful
Social Media Services
(including the original Zipipop Commandments)

2. INTRO
This presentation outlines some of the key things Zipipop
has learnt through studying, developing and consulting in
the social media sector over the last three years.
It provides some principles for concepting, developing,
marketing, and analyzing “social media” services.

3. WHY
Social media services have unique attributes. In addition to
the usual concerns, such as interaction design, we need to
consider new developments, eg — the idea of “sociability”.
By social media we refer to “online applications, platforms
and media which aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration
and the sharing of content.” (Universal McCann’s Social
Media Research Wave 3, 2008)

4. WARNING:
The Pi Rule of Startups
Development will take 3.14 times longer than planned.
Costs will be 3.14 times more than expected.
Profits will be 3.14 times less than hoped.

5. Purple Cows
To get noticed in today’s market you need to:
• Be a “purple cow”*, i.e. be remarkable and stand out
from the crowd.
• Provide a genuinely lovable or useful service.
• Find interesting, authentic stories behind your team,
brand, product or company.
* http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/67/purplecow.html

6. Understanding Users
The founders of a startup should have a personal passion for
the service they are creating; however, it is important to
also remember that your customers are not you.
The initial core idea can be made in the spirit of “build it
and they will come”, however, you quickly need to develop
a better understanding of your real customers and what
needs your are actually catering for.
Amongst other tools you should consider: fictional user
profiles, testing and focus groups, profile clustering, user
goals, and success metrics.
You need to have a Customer Development process.

7. HAND IN HAND
The marketing strategy for a social media service should be
developed early on and in parallel with the implementation —
since the face, function and feel of the service will soon
become the main “advert” upon which it will be judged.
And it is important to see some initial “proof of concept”
before getting too bogged down with technical, artistic
details.

8. Social Media Strategy
You will need to have a good idea of your “conversation
marketing” strategy — how will you promote and engage with
the discussions taking place within social media regarding your
service and why will people talk about it.
You will also need a good understanding of your distribution
channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, events, communities,
etc.).

9. VALUE OFFERING
You should be able to
summarize the value offering
on the back of a business card,
since it forces you to focus.

10. SOCIABILITY
Sociability comes about when users interact with each other.
Interaction between users is what distinguishes social media
from other media in which interactions occur between users
and the screen.
The “social interface” is surrounded by different kinds and
degrees of sociability, and social practices, which are the
collective user activities that bring your product, service, or
campaign to life.
Adrian Chan (September 2009)
http://mashable.com/2009/09/28/sociability/

11. “Sociality cannot be designed; it can only
be designed for.”
Bouman, W., Hoogenboom, T., Jansen, R., Schoondrop, M., de Bruin, B., Huizing, A.
(2008) The Realm of Sociality: Notes on the Design of Social Software. PrimaVera
Working Paper 2008-01, January 2008, University of Amsterdam.

12. KEEPING IT REAL
“To produce an effective design for social software you have
to consider the broad concept of sociality within four
domains: enabling practice, mimicking reality, building
identity and actualizing self”. [Bouman et al. 2008]
This means that we have to build upon existing social and
work practices; and enable a sense of one’s own identity to
develop within the group’s developing history.
Trying to fundamentally change the way people behave (in a
sociological sense) is a high risk strategy. In general it is
wiser to try to enhance existing social practices around
groups who have similar needs.

13. COMMUNITIES
If you are developing a social service you need think less
about gaining users and more about building communities.
You first need to define what are the core activities and
interests that will bring people together via your service.
In the beginning Facebook had a fairly clunky user-interface,
however, it always had great “sociability” — enabling users
to quickly find and connect with their real-life social
network.

14. The Four Rules of Engagement
1) Transparency of Offering (make it crystal clear)
2) Relevancy of Communication (not assumed, but assured)
3) Value of Incentive (not necessarily monetary)
4) Ease of Interaction (make it intuitive)
Jonathan McDonald
http://www.jonathanmacdonald.com/?p=1603

15. TRANSPARENCY OF OFFERING
It is important to bear in mind that one of the cornerstones
of business is to meet and exceed customer expectations.
Setting too high expectations that the service will struggle
to live up to could be damaging.
And in the new world of social media the critics openly
dissect services in public.
In the super crowded space of social media you rarely get a
second chance to win a new user.

16. RELEVANCY OF COMMUNICATION
In your marketing communication the following
should be assured and not assumed:
WHOM are you talking to?
WHAT you are offering?
WHY should they adopt or switch to your service?
WHY should they trust you?

17. Value of Incentive
What added value does the user get from themselves when
recommending the service?
And what is the gift that they are giving?

18. EASY OF INTERACTION
Quick clear demonstrations and guides to precisely what
your service offers and does.
The front page should establish interest and there should be
clear links to finding out more information.

19. “Network research has identified trust,
reciprocity and social capital as being key
components for successful networking.”
Miettinen, R. (2009). Presentation at Media Factory Researchers’ Forum:
Distributed innovation and the challenge of multi/transdisciplinarity, 23 April
2009. University of Helsinki.

20. Action Verbs
Make the keywords that represent your value proposition very
visible throughout the service.
Deals Buy Sell

21. Giving
Recommendations
Deals

22. The Importance of Good Copy
Simple words can have a huge impact on the user experience.
The use of the word “poke”, combined with an email
notification, was a clever way Facebook encouraged users in
the early days to “spam” their friends on behalf of Mr
Zuckerberg. 900+ million users later it still provides a fun way
to casually re-connect with people.
One of the coolest things about the social location-
service Foursquare is that you “Check in” to places.
Less imaginative developers would have just put
“Enter your location” or some such.
Birds twitter and tweet: Therefore this was a
great metaphor for the activity of the “twitters”,
who flock to Twitter for the round-the-clock
chorus of “tweeting”.

23. Brand Friend: Friendship Growth
Friendship building is a process and you should engage with
users at the appropriate level.

24. Customer–Brand 500-2,500
Friendships 100-200
• Within each layer a 30-50
customer can only process
~15
so many brands at any given intimate
time.
friendship
• An intimate brand is one
that people engaged with acquaintance
on a regular basis.
awareness
Note: The numbers correspond to Dunbar’s small, medium, large groups.

25. Brand User Ratios
• You should invest in x150
building up the number
of intimate customers x15
relative to the total size
x3
of the community you
hope to achieve.
intimate
friendship
acquaintance
awareness
Note: Ratios based on Dunbar’s small, medium, large groups.

26. Pyramid
Model
Early adopter groups will attract new users to start trying
the service. The more people seen to be using the service
the more other people will start paying attention.

27. Private-Public Spaces
Users generally interact on
a regular basis with a
intimates
limited number of
intimates (friends and
family). However, they
take pleasure in the ability friends
to occasionally engage with
a greater community.
acquaintances
potential contacts

28. Going Viral
To make a “social service”
go viral early adopters
should to be connected
through core shared
interests.
Early Adopter
Early Adopter
Core Interest
Early Adopter
Early Adopter
Early Adopter

29. FINDING REAL-WORLD TIES
strong ties
weak ties
Online
Online community2
user community2
University2
University1 Local
Local
area1
area2
Sportclub
Company2
Company1
Kinder
garden
User-segment analysis tool for location-based services
that can be used to help find groups of early-adopters
with shared interests.

30. CAMPFIRES
“Whenever we concept a social media application,
we are very concerned by the nature of its campfire:
how will the dancing flames attract users, keep them
warm and encourage social interaction.”
Richard Von Kaufmann (2007)

31. communities
context early adopters
communication
core interests social media
“sociability”
advertising
“social objects” conversations
publicity

32. Building a Campfire
Interest: A core shared interests that brings
people together and creates strong ties (aka
Social Objects).
Context: Where best to attract the target
audience, e.g. social network site, standalone
website, mobile, etc.
Sociability: Facilitating communication and
social interaction, e.g. newstreams, forums,
walls, group discussions, etc.

33. Marketing
Networking: Find the early adopters, connectors,
mavens, and salesmen*, get to know them and
take them personally to the fire.
Advertising : Guiding people to the fire: ads,
stickers, flyers, banners, etc.
Publicity: Blog reviews, news articles, seminars
presentations, search engine optimization, etc.
* Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, 2000

34. Zipipop Commandments
for building social media services

35. PERSONAL PASSION:
What excites you? You have to be totally in love with a
project at the start because towards the end your love will
fade away and, until it starts making money, you might even
end up hating it. If you start with just a good idea you will
never even finish it.
And you must always eat your own dog food and start asking
some serious questions if those around you don’t like your
cooking.

36. NEED
If you wish to make a profit your ideas need to be valuable,
ie – people must be willing to pay for them? There are plenty
of good ideas that are perfectly worthy but have no business
value. So find ways to turn your passions into pennies.
Otherwise create a non-profit social enterprise or go into
research.

37. CONTENT
Users must “see” content from the beginning. This can come
in the form of community driven, user-generated content
(Facebook) or readily available content from other sources
(Spotify).

38. NETWORKS
The new networked economy requires that you find existing
or, even better, growing networks to which you can connect
with. Nowadays this means providing and making the most
of existing APIs.
"As the number of nodes in a network increases
arithmetically the value of the network increases
exponentially. Adding a few more members can dramatically
increase the value for all members." (Kevin Kelly, 1999)
Facebook and Twitter are prime examples of the benefits of
network effects.

39. DISTRIBUTION
What channels are you going to used to spread your service?
Considering connecting through such services such as: email,
Facebook, micro-blogging, calendars, etc. Blog, micro-blog
and make friends with bloggers. To avoid being boring be
honest and think big. If you are not comfortable immersing
yourself in social media find an advocate who is.

40. CONTEXT
What is the context of your service? Both in terms of
community and space. Identify communities that will
connect with your service and determine where and how
they can access it.
Context will have a huge impact on how your users related
to your service.
Should it be designed to work best on large screen or mobile
formats?
Should it be accessed through the browser or a desktop app?

41. PLAY
Do you have any game elements? You should think hard
about what makes it fun: reward systems, role play, social
interaction / recognition, etc.
Amy Jo Kim has identified the following key components:
collecting, points, feedback, exchange and customization.

42. COMMITMENT
What level of commitment are you requiring from users?
Facebook and Twitter are prime examples of well-balanced
services that cater for both casual and hardcore users.
Allowing users to adjust their commitment levels over time
makes it easier for them to stay engaged.

43. METRICS
Are you getting your stats? Right from the beginning you
need keep a close eye on the frequency and direction of
usage, so that you can iterate and fine-tune.
Don’t fall into the trap of vanity metrics, ie - numbers
driven by marketing efforts.
Get more excited by return rates and retention figures
rather than overall user numbers.
Remember that a few hundred active users will provide you
enough feedback to improve the service.

44. CONFORM
Genre films (Westerns, comedy romance, etc) work best
when they meet around 80% of the audience's expectations –
with only about 20% innovation. This is a safe ratio to follow
when designing your user experience.
"A convention is a cultural constraint, one that has evolved
over time. Conventions are not arbitrary: they evolve, they
require a community of practice. They are slow to be
adopted, and once adopted, slow to go away … Use them
with respect. Violate them with great risk." – Norman, D. A.

45. TYPE
Are you creating a lovable or a pragmatic service? For a
lovable service you can push the boundaries and risk some
annoying elements because the users will be inclined to
forgive you. People loved Twitter so much they tolerated the
service going down on a regular basis in the early years.
Or you can go for a service that is useful, efficient and
makes a big effort not to be annoying, since users will be
grateful for your consideration. Think Paypal and Amazon
(which we love only so long as payments are processed and
goods delivered).

46. RELEASE
If your service has too many problems you will end up
shooting yourself in the foot and all your marketing efforts
will be wasted.
Web users are super fickle, so don't build up their
expectations too high.
Introduce new users in ever increasing waves so that there is
time to analysis and iterate in between.

47. We hope you
found that useful!
richard@zipipop.com