Chapter 11
The New Media University 801
Syndication, Illustration, and Aggregation
Collectively, we contribute to the wisdom or irrelevance of the crowds that rule the Social Web. The brilliance of social media is that at any point in time, we can gauge the sentiments and impressions, perceive the states of affairs and hot spots, glean insights, and trendcast opportunities to diagnose, discover, and predict the fate of our brand. This real-time digital sampling is infinite in its benefits and its promise.
Let it guide you.
Be thoughtful.
Make me care.
Inspire me to follow you.
Help me learn.
Earn my respect and trust.
ESTABLISHING A SYNDICATION NETWORK
The benefits of a syndication network serve as the mechanics of SMO. Also, a well-established and thoughtfully constructed syndication network can not only improve SEO and SMO, but also reach a greater audience. Similar to the social dashboard we discuss in Chapter 6, a syndication network operates on the premise that people don't necessarily find and follow objects and the individuals who interest them in the same ways. It's our job to serve as a bridge between the interesting content we create and those who are seeking it—in the networks where they're actively searching for it.
While directly participating in the social networks of significance (a topic we discuss further in our review of “The Conversation Prism” in Chapter 18), the mere act of producing a pulse in outside networks is beneficial in establishing a community around a pure informational source.
Remember, in this section, we're not discussing the actions necessary to cultivate a community through direct participation. Here, the social object becomes the participant and the greater visibility it receives through distribution increases the potential for discovery, appreciation, and redistribution.
Thus the dawn of syndication and aggregation is upon us.
Syndication symbolizes our ability to upload one object and have it simultaneously appear across multiple networks.
SYNDICATING SOCIAL OBJECTS: AN ILLUSTRATION
Aggregation refers to the content consumption patterns of those seeking content in one place, and therefore we can create branded activity streams that funnel our distributed content into one timeline (see Figure 11.1).
CHANNELING ILLUSTRATION: AN ACTIVITY STREAM
Building a framework that unites the distributed objects published in disparate networks is a primary goal of our social aggregation strategy (see Figure 11.2). In parallel, ensuring that individual social objects are beamed to other networks to balance our content marketing program is a chief objective of a social syndication strategy.
Everything starts with building a framework that extends from one source to other predefined profiles that accept outside feeds. We then build varying levels of activity feeds in designated networks to activate the content firehose for those consumers who prefer following full data streams.
When we talk about publishing one post across multiple networks simultaneously, we are syndicating that content. If we pull our diverse content from the multiple networks where they're hosted into one place, we're aggregating it. The confusion emerges when we realize that certain networks are both aggregating and possibly syndicating content simultaneously.
I know this seems a bit overcomplicated, so let's step back for a second to look at syndication and aggregation from a byte-sized perspective to further examine these concepts.
AGGREGATION: ASSEMBLING THE PIECES
Aggregation networks—also referred to as brand streams, activity feeds, or activity streams—collect the various feeds you specify and channel everything into a single branded presence (see Figure 11.3). These specialized services are hosted within dedicated social networks and allow followers to subscribe to your complete content stream for viewing, commenting, and sharing. Examples of aggregation networks include dedicated blogs, the Facebook news feed, Twitter, and more specifically, Plaxo Pulse, Tumblr, SocialThing, and Lifestream.fm.
In essence, we create a profile and presence in one or more of these networks. We then define which services we wish to funnel into these profiles, such as blog posts, Twitter updates, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, documents from Scribd, and so forth. These services offer built-in features for automating and simplifying the process for adding a wide variety of feeds and presenting them in an easy-to-follow, aesthetically pleasing data river.
EXAMPLE OF ACTIVITY STREAM
Activity feeds also offer in-network response mechanisms, similar to blog posts, Twitter, and Facebook, for followers to respond to your updates through comments, repost in their feed, bookmark, or send to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and so on (see Figure 11.4).
Naturally, syndicating your content in these activity streams further enhances organic SEO and Web visibility around important keywords.
IN-NETWORK AGGREGATION
Initially, social networks were islands: The content that was uploaded within each network was exclusive to it. Over time, network architects realized that the more people shared, the more conversations would ensue. Thus, social networks opened up the ability to import outside feeds into their profiles to increase in-network interaction—similar to activity streams—capturing and holding the attention of users in one network. It's just good for business.
Facebook, for example, offers the ability to pull feeds from almost any network into your news feed through its settings option. It provides a seamless process for choosing which streams you wish to pull and, in turn, publish in your Facebook news feed to thus be potentially discovered by those friends who choose to receive your updates in their timeline. As you publish new content from each respective network, the objects are automatically syndicated to Facebook. It's now very common to host simultaneous conversations wherever the content appears. For example, a blog post can entertain dialogue at the host site, but now that it also appears in your news feed (which is visible by friends and followers) reactions are likely to occur within Facebook concurrently (see Figure 11.5). Reactions require your attention and often your response. So many brands feed their content into their brand page on Facebook, only to never respond to fans. Even though content is apparently up to date, it's nothing more than a ghost town. Hello … is there anyone here?
Twitter is also a channel for creating and circulating original content (tweets), as well as an activity feed for sharing aggregated social objects from other social networks directly into your Twitter stream. Those who follow you on Twitter can receive your tweets plus the other social objects from outside networks. If your target consumer base is active in Twitter, this will prove as a highly valuable system for channeling additional content in and around your Tweets. Therefore, Twitter, like Facebook, is both an aggregation tool and a fundamental component of a broader syndication channel.
If you so choose, your Tweets, as well as updates from other dedicated content networks, can also broadcast to other networks, including Facebook, as part of your syndication strategy, which we discuss next (see Figure 11.6).
SYNDICATION: WEBCASTING SOCIAL OBJECTS
To illustrate the potential for the syndication network, let's examine the prospective audiences for a standard blog post. With syndication tools, we can sync the availability of a blog post from the host site and have it automatically repost in additional networks such Facebook, Twitter, Ning, and Tumblr, among many other networks of choice—thus amplifying its visibility considerably. Likewise, we can publish a video on YouTube, an image on Flickr, or post a Tweet, and have this particular object propagate immediately to all of our predefined channels.
AUTOPOSTS AND SYNDICATION
Those people who choose to follow your brand in any or all of these communities can receive the full portrait of the brand persona through your content. That's the point of all of this, I suppose. We are what we produce and visible where we publish.
Tumblr is an ideal microblog for publishing short-form original material. It also facilitates the aggregation of syndicated content into one channel. Contrarily, Posterous represents a new genre of intelligent microblog that also helps producers easily create short-form original posts. But instead of channeling syndicated content, it encourages publishers to autopost content sourced from Posterous Webwide to blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, and so forth. It also offers a unique syndication option in which you can easily dictate which posts are sent to which outside networks. It's essentially up to you whether you send updates to all or a combination of networks as dictated by the nature of the content and the communities you host within each.
Other services such as Ping.fm offer a discrete solution for publishing one update across popular services.
It is vital that you establish a functional and targeted social architecture that complements the activity of other individuals and groups within the company, as well as the social presences they create and promote.
DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS
As we weave together our syndication and aggregation networks, we must remain acutely aware of each channel and where it sends or receives content to ensure that we don't cross the streams.
Let's walk through an example of a tangled feed. If you automate the publishing of a blogpost to Twitter and have your Tumblr account set to receive either the blog post or the Twitter feed, and Twitter is automatically fed to Facebook, you've seamlessly broadcasted one post to three networks without any potential issues of crossing the streams. However, this one sentence shows that the intersection of content can potentially occur.
Let's say we publish a blog post and it's sent to Twitter and Tumblr, and ultimately Facebook. We have to ensure that Tumblr isn't set up to receive duplicate feeds from the blog or Twitter. Likewise, we also need to ensure that the Facebook settings are instructed to receive only one of those signals. Otherwise, it's quite feasible to have the blog post fed to Twitter and Tumblr, while Tumblr might also publish both the post and the tweet about the post, and then, in Facebook, we could view the post, the tweet about the post, the Tumblr post about the post, and the Tumblr post with the aggregated tweet from the post.
“The Conversation Prism” (Chapter 18) will serve as your central source for revelation and direction in the intersections of posts.
DESTINATION UNKNOWN: DEFINING THE JOURNEY THROUGH YOUR EXPERIENCE
Through the creation and distribution of online videos, blog posts, tweets, images, status updates, or a combination thereof, social objects rife with thoughtful content and intentions become an effective form of unmarketing. If we're creating content in disparate networks, we are indeed reaching people where they seek content, in the formats they prefer. But for those who choose to visit our site after viewing the media we publish in their respective network, we must ask ourselves—where are we sending these prospects and what is the impression they form or action they take once they get there?
By way of illustration, if a customer, influencer, or peer viewed a video on YouTube or picture series on Flickr, stumbled across a story on Digg, became a member of our Facebook brand page, or retweeted us, what is the next action that we're defining? How do we connect that person to other relevant information, content, and outcomes? Does our website, as it stands, suffice for those who choose to click through to the home page or designated product pages?
Did you just hear those brakes screeching?
It's an all-too-common occurrence that, rather than socialize the experience from introduction to action, we send prospects to a static dead end at our website.
Participating and engaging is only part of the process. Defining the experience and guiding people to a destination that invites further interaction and steers, enhances, and reinforces positive sentiment strengthens the branded chain of events. (See Figure 11.7.) It is also an opportunity to capture user information and promote commerce.
As we syndicate our story and value proposition, we must funnel attention to its designated channel of relevance—a dedicated hub that serves as a visual menu for people seeking to connect, learn, communicate, and collaborate. Today, when we participate and engage in the Social Web, we directly and indirectly drive consumers to review our profile page to learn more about us. From there, it's usually unclear where they go unless we establish a click path. But most of the time, we send them to our home page or we send them into the ether, and none of it is guided or intended. Referring people to a traditional landing, or home page, in the Social Web is not only immeasurable, it's ineffective.
At the beginning of any social media initiative, we must establish an endgame—what is it that we are hoping to accomplish and how are we going to measure it?
The first step in answering this question is to realize that social media is not relegated solely to the creation, production, and distribution of social objects.
There's no shortage of businesses, and, more specifically, the individuals who represent them, seeking insights, answers, and directions to make decisions. The Web has both simplified and complicated the process of decision making. We mistakenly take comfort in the assumption that our customers already view us as a source of guidance and wisdom. However, it's not enough to create content. As you know, anyone with an opinion, a keyboard, camera, or microphone, fueled by the desire to share, can do so at will nowadays. The question is, how do you, as an authentic marketer, business leader, and service professional convince prospects that you're believable, qualified, and ready to lead?
Our job is to build the bridges that connect what we represent to those seeking direction. Once we understand how to build these bridges, we ultimately become experienced social architects.
As we're learning, however, the bridges we build between people and social objects and the experiences they encounter along the way are fragmentary if not steered and managed. These bridges need to lead to destinations that not only provide information, but also lead the followers to resolution. Therefore, social engagement is routed through the roads, highways, off-ramps, and ports of call that are constructed by thoughtful social engineers. It is this social engineering that enables the interconnection of experiences and perception.
Partnering with the Web team is paramount, and not optional. To best guide people to action, we have to engineer and build a cohesive experience that connects social networks and social objects to our overall brand, its defining tenets, and desirable outcomes.
But, what about the corporate website?
What about the company's commerce site and associated search and reviews engine?
How about the hosting of conversations directly on the company site in addition to conducting dispersed social interactions across the Web?
What about building links between our brand and the objects and networks where it's syndicated?
The experience must be complete and dynamic from the point of introduction to the point of action, tied together by the intentions we wish to instill. Regardless of social or broadcast or static presences, we must always purport, represent, embody, and personify oneness. (See Figure 11.8.)
We are one.
But the paradox of oneness in social media is that we relinquish control of the brand and the message—either unknowingly or willfully or both. Contrary to popular belief, a brand is not completely crowdsourced, nor should it be.
In a report published on ClickZ in July 2009,1 Bill McCloskey, in partnership with StrongMail, observed the email marketing campaigns of top brands and how they integrated social presences into the corporate fold. The data he analyzed revealed that top brands were reviving email campaigns with the inclusion of links to social profiles, specifically Facebook and Twitter.
In the ClickZ article, McCloskey reported that top brands such as Nike, Intel, The Gap, Pepsi, Sony, HP, Home Depot, Lane Bryant, Circuit City, Saks Fifth Avenue, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lands’ End, and J.C. Penney included social media within email marketing messages. But, where were they sending people? And what was the mission and purpose behind the social strategy?
We need a hub that's consistent with the experiences consumers expect inside and outside our mission control.
H&R Block's Digits site (http://digits.hrblock.com) is an H&R-branded community that offers tax and personal financial resources through Q&As, forums, videos, podcasts, blogs, and more. The site provides a wealth of information from H&R experts to help people navigate the murky waters of mortgage refinancing, economic stimulus benefits, and tax preparation and deductions. Digits also provides a host of widgets, such as Economic Stimulus FAQs and Tax Answers, to further spread the company's resources across blogs and social sites. American Express Open Forum for Small Businesses, www.openforum.com, is also designed around the social experience. The destination site is literally an idea hub that features advice, information and also the expertise of prominent small business and social media bloggers such as Guy Kawasaki of AllTop, Adam Ostrow of Mashable, Henry Blodget of Business Insider, and John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. The hub also offers tips for one's life and work balance, essentially providing a complete experience for business owners to focus attention rather than scour the Web in search of direction (see Figure 11.9). There's more to the story, however. American Express has extended the Open Forum experience to Facebook and Twitter to engage with business owners outside the site. And with the inclusion of many notable bloggers who maintain quite prominent presences in the Social Web in their own right, they use their social channels to distribute their contributions, thus further extending the American Express Open story.
Oneness therefore doesn't assume just one presence, just one mission, purpose, or resolve across the entire Web. The previous examples represent destinations that extend and focus the company's corporate message at the market or product level, while still building equity for the brand overall. If we evaluate the typical sales process that customers experience, we can intertwine a messaging platform that's consistent across social networks and objects:
1. Need/want/desire is recognized
2. Search for information
3. Evaluate options
4. The action of purchase
5. After-purchase evaluation
Adding to the list of attributes that are fundamental drivers for creating effective online presences and corresponding communities, we should also include those seeking:
1. Recognition
2. Affinity/association
3. Purpose
4. Insight
5. Entertainment
6. Rewards
7. Empowerment
8. Resolution
9. Access
10. Exclusive content
Addressing each of these points with content, design, structure, and click paths will inspire new, enriched, and socially effective experience-driven programs not unlike what we might expect to see in a standard experiential marketing initiative. For those not familiar with experiential marketing, it is the art of creating an experience in which the result is an emotional connection to a person, brand, product, or idea.2 In social media, people engage others directly and indirectly through conversations and conversational objects. It is an emotional landscape.
At the very least, the marketing, communications, services, and sales teams representing the brand in social and traditional media must collaborate on the redesign of all online entities, especially the corporate focal point—that is, the main website.
You must ensure that the landing, or home, pages feature social objects, opportunities for interaction, spotlighting of customers and visitors, and also a directory of external social presences and aggregated content from each, within one location. Also, be respectful of the thinning attention span of those who have intentionally clicked through to your site. Grab and hold their attention and walk them through their paths of choice, making it simple and rewarding to take action, but define that action before you attempt to channel it.
Define the experience you wish them to take away.
More specifically, when you are actively participating in the Social Web and when you are establishing the profiles, pages, and communities in each respective social network, make sure that you point them to predetermined destinations within the corporate site or to a hub in which action can be captured.
This is how we focus attention, trigger activity, and set forth the metrics to capture a return on our investment.
NOTES
1. Bill McCloskey, “Twitter Surpasses Facebook as Top Link in E-mail,” ClickZ, sponsored by StrongMail (July 30, 2009), www.clickz.com/ 3634551.
2. “Experiential Marketing,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Experiential_marketing.