What is Social Media?

I am attempting to provide a short and sweet answer with a growing list of links to popular examples. This content was created for a meeting with a selected group of Vorgons trying to build a better website about intergalactic sewer maintenance and why they should be bothered with twitter to communicate their products and services.

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that is intended to facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and with public audiences, typically via the Internet and mobile communications networks. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Types of Social Media

Communication

• Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Vox
• Internet forums: vBulletin, phpBB
• Micro-blogging / Presence applications: Twitter,Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku
• Social networking: Avatars United, Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Netlog, Hi5_(website)
• Social network aggregation: FriendFeed, Youmeo
• Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint
• Social bookmarking: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Stumpedia, Google Reader
• social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit
• Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp

Multimedia

• Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug
• Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo, Revver
• Art sharing: deviantART
• Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Skype
• Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter

Entertainment

• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online
• Online gaming: World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Age of Conan, Spore
• Game sharing: Miniclip

The best and worst practices of Social Media

Ok. The meeting with the trolls better than exspected. Unfortunatly the Grand Vazier of Trolls had a son that used twitter in thier Troll Pillager Prep School web design class so clearly he has all the information he needs about social media. So I received a memo how he would be leading the charge on the social media project, considering is vast knowledge and that he had a few ideas. The content of this post was intended as pre-emptive information before the mis-information campaign began. Still not sure if I made it in time.

Social Media Best Practices:

• Start with a plan, not tactics. Research and build a Social Media Roadmap involving: Audience, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Tools/Technology and Metrics. [Insert plug here: TopRank offers a 2 day workshop on how to do this]

• “Give to get” - Successful social media marketing programs involve listening and participation. That participation centers around giving value before expecting anything in return. This is not “sales” as you know it. But companies can definitely increase sales as a result.

• Commit resources & time to be successful or you may very well fail. It’s important to forecast labor hours, who, what, when, how and where with the intention of succeeding, not just experimenting. If a social media effort is successful, scalability will be an even bigger issue if you don’t plan for it. Hiring a community manager for example, may not be justified when a social media monitoring program is started or with a new company, but a job req and understanding of the role should be ready in case it’s called for.

• Be transparent with intentions & your identity or you may alienate the very audiences you’re trying to connect with. Objectives, strategy and doing your homework about a community should make it pretty obvious what types of commercial messages are appropriate. Being transparent about intentions might come in the form of stating a purpose: ”Brand XYZ has created this Facebook page to help consumers make better choices about Topic XYZ”. It’s fine if goals are to increase sales, but participation should be focused on providing the kind of value that facilitates sales - not attempting to make sales directly. When is the last time you purchased something other than a virtual cupcake on Facebook?

• Understand, you do not control the message. Old habits die hard and there’s a tendency to want to treat social media participation like advertising where the ability to control messaging is the norm. Once information or media is available on the social web, people will inevitably mash it up, stretch it, pull it and reshape it according to their interests. Brands need to protect their identities, copyright and intellectual property for sure, but rather than “controlling the message” marketers should encourage the mashup and creativity.

• Welcome participation, feedback and co-creation. As comfort levels rise with social web participation, companies will see opportunties to encourage participation with communications, especially with brand evangelists. Developing relationships and community within social communities on the web can facilitate buy in, provide invaluable feedback and crowdsourcing opportunities.

• Metrics should roll up to objectives and objectives should be relevant to the channel. More than a few companies see evidence of other social media efforts ranging from Superbowl commercials on YouTube to social participation during and after President Obama’s campaign, and “want that too”. Direct marketing is the lens through which many social media efforts are first viewed, with a tendency to focus on action “A” resulting in “B” outcome. Social media marketing is more like public relations than direct marketing. It’s more like providing resource “A” results in “action “B” that influences outcome “C”. Metrics for success need to consider the pre-goal performance indicators like number of “friends”, comments, links, etc as well as commercial outcomes influenced by social media participation.

Social Media Worst Practices:

• Being fake in any way isn’t good for anyone on the social web. Early on, companies like Walmart and Sony (via their PR firms) tried to fake their way into making consumers believe sites like the Sony PSP blog or the Walmarting Across America blog were authored by impartial brand evangelists, when it wasn’t that at all. Both Sony and Walmart have learned from those mistakes and now have social media sites that follow many of the best practices above. Some say failure with social media is a sort of “rite of passage”.

• Not listening. How can you learn anything if information is only flowing one way? Listening is really the most important step in learning about social communities on the web. It’s important just starting out and even more so on an ongoing basis to monitor conversations, sentiment about brands and identifying influentials to engage. Lucky for companies, there are abundant social media monitoring tools to choose from.

• Being oblivious to formal & unwritten social rules. It pays to lurk a bit before participation with social communities, especially when you have commercial intentions. Aspire to “speak like a native” when embarking on social media journey to improve your brand visibility and to encourage relationships. Social networking, news and media sharing sites all have Terms of Service guidelines, but the community itself will have guidelines for behavior that can only be understood by observing and participating. Ignoring these guidelines risks alienation by the community.

• Being pushy or overtly salesy in messaging and communications and expecting traditional marketing outcomes are common behaviors by companies that see social media communities simply as content distribution channels for existing marketing programs. Overt commercial messages, especially sales solicitations are outright tabu in most social communties. A social environment amongst “friends” and likeminded individuals isn’t going to accept interruptive messaging. Think of barging into a conversation at a party trying to sell something to people who are talking about their favorite movies and sharing baby pictures - and the disdain that behavior would encourage. Provide the kind of information that facilitates choices that lead to sales, and you’ll go a lot further.

• Approaching social media channels as silos - Many companies approach social media via individual web sites rather than as a collaborative effort. An example would be a company that starts a blog within one division and another that starts something on Facebook and yet another creates a group on LinkedIn or Ning. Not working together is inefficient and can create mixed messages for consumers that participate in more than one social media destination for the brand.

Common Web 2.0 Design Practices

Once Again I have found my self in a position on trying to educate my troll audience with basic concepts. Trolls seem to have an uncanney ability to ask for the delivery of some technology buzz word with out the ability to understand what they have asked for. Here is a simplfied response to the Trolls about what they could expect from a Web 2.0 Styled website.

• Simple Layouts
  Sites are moving to simple straight to the point communication. No more craming content. Plenty of whitespace. Lots of padding around elements.
• Site Position
  Centered orientation is teh design standard with 940 pixel being a prefered site size. Some site will test user resolution for browsers displaying less than 800X600 resolution and reposition any right hand column elements under the rest of the site.
• Navigation
  Functional Footers, Right Hand menus, Minimal focal point let the content do the the talking
• Content!!! Is the Focus not the Layout
  Design the content, not the page. the content of the page is where the value is for the end user. Each piece of content should be able to stand on it's own.
• Colors Usage
  Soft, neutral background colors, Strong color, used sparingly.
• Buttons and Icons
  Cutesy Icons used sparingly, Action Icons Green completion or Deletion buttons Red
• White Space
  site are using more white space than ever