The fundamentals and associated benefits of a syndication network serve as the mechanics of SMO. In addition, a well-established and thoughtfully constructed syndication network can not only improve SEO and SMO, but also enhance the consumption diets of those who choose to follow your activities. Similar to the social dashboard we discuss in Chapter 6, a syndication network operates on the premise that people don't 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 meaningful content.

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 neces-sarytoeffectively cultivate acommunity through direct participation. Here, the social object becomes the participant and the greater visibility it receives through predefined 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.

Aggregation refers to the content consumption patterns of those seeking content in one place, and therefore we can create branded activity streams that channel our distributed content into one timeline (see Figure 11.1).

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.

Figure 11.1. Syndicating Social Objects

Figure 11.2. Aggregating Social Objects

Aggregation + Syndication = Extended presence for scattered social objects and improved organic SMO and SEO

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 fire-hose for those consumers who prefer following full data streams.

The idea of the abstraction of content in aggregate or syndicate can be perceived as oxymoronic at times. 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 data. 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.

Figure 11.3. Channeling Social Objects into One Aggregated Stream

Aggregation networks-also referred to as brand streams, lifestreams, 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 Plaxo Pulse, Tumblr, SocialThing, Lifestream.fm, Chi.mp, Profilactic, and FriendFeed (before the Face-book acquisition).

Essentially, 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.

Lifestream or activity feed systems 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 content-voting communities such as Digg or StumbleUpon (see Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4. Social News Feed

Naturally, syndicating your content in these activity streams further enhances organic SEO and Web visibility around important keywords.

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.

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 and aggregated in Facebook. It's now very common to host multiple responses and simultaneous conversations wherever the content appears. For example, a blog post can entertain dialogue at the host site, but now that it also appeared in your news feed (which is visible by friends and followers) reactions are likely to occur within Facebook concurrently (see Figure 11.5).

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 in your Twitter stream. Those who follow you on Twitter can receive your tweets plus the other social objects from unconnected networks in their timeline. If your target consumer base is highly 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/or a fundamental component of a broader syndication channel.

Figure 11.5. Facebook Social News Feed

Figure 11.6. Twitter Social News Feed

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'll discuss next (see Figure 11.6).

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 extending and 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.

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 strategically crafted and curated media. 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 long-or (preferably) 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 Web-wide 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.

There are many other tools that enable seamless syndicated publishing of social objects to outside networks, while certain communities offer this functionality inherently.

To channel objects to other networks that don't already offer the ability to pull feeds from other sources, "feedcasting" tools are readily available. For example, automating the syndication of a blog post to say, Twitter, TwitterFeed, or Feednest can connect the post as it is published directly to Twitter in the form of a tweet with an integrated link back to the source post. Setting up similar feeds, social objects published on other networks can also automatically simulcast to Twitter and/or other networks of your choosing.

Other services such as Ping.fm offer a discrete solution for publishing one update across prearranged, multiple services from Twitter to Facebook to BrightKite to Tumblr (and many others).

It is vital that you establish a viable, functional, and streamlined social architecture that complements the activity of other individuals and groups within the company, as well as the social presences they create and promote.

As we weave together our syndication and aggregation networks, we must remain acutely aware of each channel and where it sends or receives objects to ensure that we "don't cross the streams." This is especially true for larger organizations with multiple marketing, PR, and service departments. The likelihood for overlapping feeds is compounded not only by the size but also the mastery and savvy of those responsible for producing content, and further complicated by the reality that within most businesses, the opportunity will exist for multiple branded accounts within each social network.

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.

Through the creation and distribution of online videos, blog posts, tweets, images, status updates, or a combination thereof, social objects rife with thoughtful and helpful content and intentions become an effective form of unmarketing through education, entertainment, and engagement. 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 of member of our Facebook group, or favorited one of our tweets or status updates, what is it the next action that we're defining? How do we connect them to other relevant information, content, and satisfaction? Does our website, as it stands, suffice for those who choose to click-through to the homepage 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 those whom you reach to a destination that invites further interaction and steers, enhances, and reinforces perceptions and impressions balances and 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, share, and procure content or products and services. 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, strategic, or tactical. Referring people to a traditional landing or home page in the Social Web is not only immeasurable, it's ineffective.

Figure 11.7. Defining the Experience

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 simplify, organize, and elucidate the intimidating and confusing set of available options. The Web has both simplified and complicated the process of decision-making. In unison, we mistakenly take comfort in the assumption that our customers and influencers 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 freely and perpetually 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 whom we can soundly advise, tethered by the answers, information, and exchanges that fortify each passage.

Once we understand how to build the bridges that connect knowledge and aspiration, we ultimately become accomplished and 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, strategically presented, and governed. 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 devised and constructed by thoughtful and well-prepared social engineers.

It is this social engineering that enables the fabrication and interconnection of experiences and perception.

Partnering with the Web team is paramount, and not optional. In order to guide people to action, we have to engineer and build a complete and cohesive experience that connects social networks and social objects to our overall brand, its defining tenets, and its community.

But, what about the corporate website?

What about the company's commerce site and associated search and reviews engine?

Figure 11.8. Brand Identity Crisis

How about the hosting of conversations directly on the company site in addition to conducting dispersed social interactions across the Web"

What about building cohesion 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 ideas and intentions we wish to convey and instill. Regardless of social or broadcast or static presences, we must always purport, represent, embody, and personify a harmony of 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, without regard for the inevitable disconnection of the brand and the dissociation of its attributes. Contrary to popular belief, a brand is not completely crowd-sourced, nor should it be.

In a report published on ClickZ in July 2009,^[26] Bill McCloskey, in partnership with StrongMail, observed the e-mail 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 e-mail campaigns with the inclusion of links to social profiles, specifically Facebook, Twitter, and also MySpace.

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 e-mail marketing messages. Since 2007, the number of e-mail campaigns that contained links to Facebook and Twitter dramatically increased, becoming the two most prominent links integrated in all e-mail marketing initiatives in 2009. For example, in 2008 McCloskey tracked 215 campaigns with a Twitter link and 729 programs promoting Facebook. In 2008, the number grew by 1,081 percent to 2,540 campaigns spotlighting Twitter profiles and 1,635 percent to 12,650 featuring Facebook. Midway through 2009, the numbers are progressively growing, but still astonishing nonetheless. As of June, the number of campaigns that included a link to the branded Twitter account grew to 41,399, with 41,052 for Face-book. The report was published partially through July 2009 and by the 27th of the month, McCloskey noted 9,063 campaigns including Face-book links and 10,277 e-mail initiatives with links to branded Twitter accounts.

Not only are these numbers off the charts in terms of year over year growth, companies referring e-mail recipients to Twitter profiles surpassed Facebook pages-yet both continued to grow remarkably. In another study released in July 2009, Burson-Marsteller^[27] also validated that brands were opting for the promotion of Twitter over Facebook and corporate blogs. In fact, the numbers documented in a study of Fortune 100 companies showed that 54 percent of companies maintained a presence on Twitter, with only 29 percent on Facebook. Thirty-two percent of those reviewed published a corporate blog. In aggregate, the numbers painted a picture of opportunity. Twenty-one percent of those companies studied relied on one channel (Twitter, Facebook, or blogs), 22 percent were active on two channels, 17 percent maintained presences across all three, and a surprising 40 percent of Fortune 100 companies had yet to embrace any of the three.

As an interesting aside, Burson-Marsteller found that of the Fortune 100 companies using Twitter, the top usage scenarios included company news, customer service, marketing promotions, and employee recruitment.

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.

The previous example represents 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:

Adding to the list of attributes that are fundamental drivers for creating effective online presences and corresponding communities, we should also include those seeking:

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 where the result is an emotional connection to a person, brand, product, or idea.^[28] In social media, people engage others directly and indirectly through conversations and conversational objects.

At the very least, the marketing, communications, services, and sales teams representing social and traditional 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/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 consciously and 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 to impart and transfer.

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, ensure that you point them to pre-determined destinations within the corporate site or to a hub where action can be captured.

This is how we focus attention, trigger activity, and measure ROI.

Soap-making supplier Bramble Berry (www.brambleberry.com) brings a taste of both e-commerce and social features to its home page. From the start, it's instantly apparent what the company does and how to find and purchase needed supplies and products. And from a social standpoint, the home page offers a more personal connection with the company, as well as affording visitors plenty of opportunities to interact. Visitors can instantly check out Bramble Berry videos on YouTube and Vimeo, see their presence on Facebook, and follow their tweets. And there's always a real customer story featured as "Soaping Success Stories," a sidebar that also encourages customers to write in with their own Bramble Berry success stories.

But even more important, Bramble Berry has made sure to fill its sites and social presences with helpful tips and other resources for the soap-making hobbyist and professional. For example, the Soap Queen Blog and Soap Queen TV (both featured very prominently on the website) offer new recipes, video tutorials, and business tips. And there are links to other soap-making resources on the Web. As a result, Bramble Berry becomes a go-to site for soap makers.