Bashki Generation

Facebook Wants To Change The Way You Share

Jonathan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:54:36 +0000

Facebook is looking to fundamentally change the way you share content. But the jury is still out on whether a revolutionary idea that makes sense in theory will be embraced by the masses.

At the F8 conference yesterday Facebook laid-out its vision for the next phase of the social Web. And while much of the attention was focused on the re-designed profile page – which has been re-named the “timeline” – the real story is how Facebook envisages sharing to evolve over the coming months and years. The short story is that Facebook wants to remove as much friction from sharing as possible so that it’s seamlessly integrated with a user’s online activity. It’s a logical evolution for Facebook, but it will also require a significant change in mindset for users – and that’s something which could be a stumbling block.

As I’ve noted in previous posts, content sharing today is extremely easy. Simply click a “Share” or “Re-tweet” button at the bottom of a piece of content and – in just a couple of clicks – you can broadcast your latest discovery to your network of friends. But as simple as this seems, the one point of friction is that you have to do this for every piece of content you want to share. So if I find 17 articles on CNN that I think are share-worthy, I have to click 17 times to share them (once per article).

To many this may not seem like a particular hardship. But clearly Facebook views this as experience as something that’s somewhat forced and un-natural. In its view of the world, the simple act of consumption should be enough of a trigger to share what you’re consuming with your friends. So if you’re reading an article on CNN you shouldn’t have to pro-actively tell people you’re reading it – it should happen automatically. If you’re listening to a new album you shouldn’t have to make the effort to announce that you’re listening to it, it should simply appear in your activity feed that you are listening to it.

So for the first time sharing becomes something that just happens in the background in response to your activity online. Sound a bit creepy? To some, it does. Facebook attempts to get around this issue by requiring users to actively opt-in to agree to share their activity when using certain services. A great early example of this is the Yahoo News app. Once you agree to let Yahoo News connect and share your activity with Facebook, it automatically begins posting the stories you’ve read to your timeline. So if you read 3 stories on the GOP presidential candidate debates, the Euro-Zone debt crisis and a humming bird kissing a rabbit they’ll automatically be shared on your Timeline without you having to do anything. Your friends activity will be posted too, and the hope is that such seamless sharing of content will enhance the social curation process and allow you to discover really interesting things your friends are reading.

But this won’t just stop at news. Think music. Videos. In fact think any type of content. It’s going to be up to individual developers to create apps that promote this level of frictionless sharing, so expect a whole wealth of them to start hitting the market.

Now back to the creepy factor. When people begin to fully understand what’s being proposed by Facebook, there’ll be the inevitable “this is creepy” backlash. Even though you have to actively **opt-in** to enable this type of frictionless sharing, it’s guaranteed to make some folks uneasy.

But for me that’s not the real problem with this change in sharing. In a previous post I outlined some of the reasons why people share content, and made the point that in many cases it’s a way to define who we are. Think of it as an opportunity to shape and control your own self-image by deciding what nuggets of content you want to release to the world. In a strange way it’s like public relations. Public relations companies carefully craft their client’s image by stage-managing almost every aspect of their public life. They know what to release to the world – and what to hold back – in an attempt to tell the right story about their client.

For the average Facebook user there are some parallels here. People carefully choose what they share with the rest of the world because it goes some way in defining how they’d like to be perceived. The reality is that sharing content is as much about the individual who’s sharing, as it is the people that the content is being shared with.

Think about some of your friends. There’s the person who thinks he’s funny that likely only shares really funny content. There’s the music fan who shares music videos or unusual music finds. Maybe the politics buff who’s constantly sharing links that define his or her own political persuasion. All the content we share contributes to cultivating our own image online.

But in order to cultivate an image, you need to be able to control it. While the music fan does indeed love music – and wants to share it with the rest of the world – he might also occasionally indulge in a guilty pleasure or two (Bieber anyone?). Is that something he wants to share? And that dude who thinks he’s funny? Well maybe for every 5 hilarious video clips he shares, he watches 20 really lame ones. Does he want to share the 20?

The bottom line is that sharing is as much about editing as it is about sharing. In some respects the content we choose not to share is just as important as the content we do share. And when we lose this ability to edit – when our sharing becomes a stream of everything we encounter in our day – we’re no longer in control. And for many people that’s going to be a huge stumbling block to overcome.

Despite the above, one thing that’s clear is that we’re entering a fascinating period in the evolution of sharing. It’s going to be interesting to see how users react to the notion of frictionless sharing. Facebook thinks it’s going to revolutionize the social space and for some it clearly will. But I believe that many users will want the power to edit. Because curation is really just a slightly fancier way of saying **editing**.

Sharing: The New Metric In Town

Jonathan — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:48:53 +0000

In the world of Web analytics there are a few tried-and-trusted stalwarts that have been around since the early days of the Internet revolution and remain with us today. If you’re a content creator, unique visitors/visits and page views are essential – with a healthy dose of page views per visit, time spent on site and a few other data points to add to the mix. If you’re an advertiser or direct marketer then impressions, clicks and conversions are key. But as the social space continues to evolve and mature, another metric – sharing – could emerge as the most important of them all.

One of the greatest benefits of operating in the digital space is that everything is measurable. That’s great news for advertisers, marketers and (although some might disagree with me ) content creators who can glean real-time, high quality performance insight in a way that simply isn’t possible in other traditional media channels.

But as anybody who’s worked with Web metrics will tell you, it’s still far from perfect. While Web metrics are great at reporting on end-results – or actions (e.g. 25,000 people definitively clicked on this link) – they’re not so great at illustrating the motivations behind these actions. This disconnect can sometimes be a problem.

For example, if a brand told you that on Friday it had received 10 million organic click-throughs to its “GOP: Republican Presidential Candidate Debate Review” article you’d assume on face value that’s a great result. But if you later learned that the article was being promoted on the site with a huge graphic that screamed “Free iPad To First 100 Users! Lady Gaga Naked! Cat Drives Mini Cooper Wrong Way Down Highway! Perry and Romney Face Off” then suddenly your perspective might change.

People click on links for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because they’re being misled (either deliberately or accidentally) with regard to the content that link points to. Other times because they accidentally click on something. And so on. The act of clicking is a good measure of an activity, but doesn’t reveal the sentiment behind it.

There’s been a fairly long-rumbling battle over the value of a click and advertisers are now beginning to appreciate that – when it comes to measuring the success or failure of a digital campaign – the CTR shouldn’t be the primary measure. But if that’s the case, then what should be?

Enter the “share”.

As I’ve written before, there isn’t anything particularly revolutionary about the concept of sharing. Word-of-mouth personal recommendations have existed since the beginning of time and social media platforms are able to facilitate this behavior by making it incredibly easy to share things with others. But sharing is important because – by its very nature – it suggests a level of engagement and commitment is present in the person sharing the content.

By sharing something I am – by default – endorsing it. That endorsement comes in numerous shapes and sizes, but nevertheless it is an endorsement that this particular link includes something that you REALLY need to see. It could be something funny, sad, outrageous, time-saving, useful……but ultimately it’s something that I deem important enough for you to know about.

Brands are going to want to know more about sharing for several reasons. Firstly, while all clicks are created equal all shares – as I previously noted - are not. You want to know who’s doing the sharing and pay special attention to these people, because they could turn out to be your strongest brand advocates.

Secondly – and this is perhaps the most exciting – the compound effect when it comes to generating traffic through sharing is huge. In some of our research we’ve seen instances where for every one user that shares a link, 5 new unique users are driven back to a site. Sometimes its hard for people to imagine how certain YouTube clips can generate hundreds of million of views in a short space of time. It almost seems impossible for organic growth of this magnitude to take place. But the multiplier effect of sharing can be incredibly powerful. And that’s a metric that any brand should be tracking because understanding not only how much traffic sharing drives to your site, but also how valuable your **sharers** are compared to your competition is worth knowing.

Social Media – like SEO – often has a reputation problem. There are too many self-appointed “gurus” out there who, to some at least, operate in a world of smoke and mirrors in which tangible results are hard to pin-down. But the power of sharing is not only real, but is something that is measurable in concrete terms. Word-of-mouth recommendations are essentially free advertising so for any brand looking to not just grow an audience, but grow a high quality audience it’s something that should be a central focus.

The New Hierarchy of Sharing

Jonathan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:02:23 +0000

One big question that arises around content sharing is “are all shares created equal?” The crux of this question relates to exactly who somebody is sharing content with. Some people are likely to be more influential and command more respect in the online space than others and thus logic dictates that these are the folks you really want to target. But with the launch of Google + and recent changes implemented by Facebook, this “hierarchy of sharing” is likely going to become increasingly important to brands who are looking to generate viral traction around their products and campaigns.

Sharing has traditionally been a fairly simple process (a topic I explored in a previous post about “Lazy Sharers”). An individual amasses a network of followers and simply shares a link with his/her entire network. Now for most people this network will likely contain a broad mixture of connections – ranging from individuals you know intimately (family, close friends) to those who you don’t really know at all (old school friends, industry “experts”, former work colleagues).

But sharing content didn’t really discriminate between these nuances in your network. If a user shared a video clip on Facebook it would be seen both by dear Aunt Bessie and Mark Migglesworth, that annoying kid from 8th grade who for some reason you decided to allow into your network.

Google saw a problem with such “blanket sharing” and incorporated a new feature – Circles – into its Google + social networking product. Circles allows users to essentially segment their network into different buckets. So you might create one Circle for friends, one for family, one for industry professionals etc. Then, more importantly, you can decide exactly what content you want to share with which circle. So the photograph of you dressed as Barry The Asthmatic Owl for Halloween might be great for friends to see, but not so appropriate for co-workers.

Facebook recently rolled-out a very similar feature whereby a user can decide who to share certain content with. The default setting is “public” – which means everybody gets to benefit from your sharing love – but if desired you can limit your audience to specific individuals within your network.

This is an important change, especially since Facebook continues to be the number one channel for sharing and Google is one of the fastest **growing** channels for sharing. Two very specific questions spring to mind.

The first question is simply whether this type of granular control over sharing will catch-on. When it comes to user experience simpler is always better and sometimes what makes great theoretical sense doesn’t always translate into mass adoption.

My personal take is that Google + Circles will likely be too much work for the vast majority of users. While I have no doubt that many super-users will embrace it, for the average Joe managing a multitude of sub-networks will likely be too much effort. I had this very conversation with a programmer friend of mine who absolutely loves the feature. In his mind Circles makes total logical sense and gives him the ability to manage his social network in a whole new way. But my suspicion is that to the non-techie/Web person the reality of managing Circles will be too frustrating and detract from the simplicity of social networking – but of course that remains to be seen.

But let’s assume for argument’s sake that enough people – or at least enough online influencers – adopt this new approach to sharing. Suddenly, for the first time a hierarchy begins to develop in the sharing world. And that hierarchy is based on which Circles – or groups of Facebook friends – a user decides to share something with.

Brands will now want to ensure that users are sharing their content/campaigns/products with the RIGHT Circles/groups that contain the most influencers. Because if users begin selectively sharing, a brand can no longer assume their message is being re-broadcast across an individual’s entire network.

Here’s a case in point. Let’s imagine I’ve decided to set-up 4 different Circles on Google +. Circle 1 is called “Family”, which is self-explanatory. Circle 2 is called “Digital Contacts” and includes people I know from within the digital space. Circle 3 is called “Friends” and consists of close personal friends. Circle 4 is called “Pub Chat” and includes a group of old friends from my early 20s that I loosely stay in touch with.

For argument’s sake, I’m going to assume that the majority of influencers sit in Circle 2 and the Circle with the fewest influencers is Circle 4. So if a brand is trying to generate social traction around a campaign, it’ll likely want me to share its link with Circle 2 as opposed to Circle 4. Of course I **might** share a link with everyone, but under this new segmented world that can no longer be guaranteed.

Suddenly brands have to start thinking differently about sharing and need to make sure they’re inspiring the right customers to share a link with the right Circle of connections. That’s why not only understanding who the influencers are, but also understanding what motivates them to share content is going to become increasingly important in this new socially segmented world.

Of course it’s still early days and we might find – as I outlined above – that selective sharing doesn’t catch on. But it only needs to take-hold amongst a small percentage of influencers in order for it to have an impact. This is definitely an area to watch with interest because it could have major implications on sharing behavior in the future.

Are You A Lazy Sharer?

Jonathan — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:59:00 +0000

We all have them. They’re the Twitter users who we initially thought would be worth following, but who simply re-tweet articles with no personal commentary or insight. I call this crowd the Lazy Sharers because their sole activity is to regurgitate articles you’ve already seen a hundred times before – and they do it all-day, every day. But if you’re a content publisher looking to get more social traction, understanding the Lazy Sharer is key to developing a sound sharing strategy.

There’s a great post on this very subject over at Mashable, where the author asks the question “Is content sharing too easy?”. The premise here is that 99 per cent of blogs and content sites play host to a bevy of sharing buttons that – when clicked – allow somebody to share the link to the respective article without breaking a sweat. The “Share on Twitter” button makes the whole process ridiculously easy by pre-populating a Tweet with the headline of the article to be shared, along with the link. It’s already gift-wrapped and requires no additional work from the sharer.

The big issue here is that the value of this kind of share quickly diminishes over time. If somebody in my network is doing nothing other than robotically re-tweeting tens of links every day my attention span will quickly wane. Social curation is helpful, but that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to simply absorb a re-tweeting free-for-all from somebody that sits in my network.

There are – however – two specific exceptions to this rule. If somebody has a particularly stellar reputation in a given field, I’m far more likely to tolerate a mechanical re-tweet. For example – if I was following Steve Jobs on Twitter and he re-tweeted 9 links to separate articles on emerging technologies, I’d likely want to read more. If Doug, the ex-roommate of that girl I used to date 9 years did the same, it probably wouldn’t have as much impact. So even within social networks, there is a reputation-based hierarchy as some people will influence you more than others. That’s exactly the premise on which Klout was formed and the company lets users sign-up and get their social “influencer” score on a scale of 1-100.

The second exception is if the content being re-tweeted is so unique and interesting that I can’t get it anywhere else. If Doug – the ex-roommate of that girl I used to date re-tweets a collection of brilliantly curated links to really compelling content I’d definitely be engaged. But sadly this isn’t the norm. Most re-tweets are simply links to stories – or re-hashes of stories – that you’ve already seen a hundred times. I really don’t need 7 of my friends to re-tweet the same TechCrunch story that Google + has launched. This type of circular regurgitation of content starts to get annoying and clutters up my feed.

So what is a brand to make of all this? Well the key takeaway is that all shares are not necessarily created equal. Social influencers are important when it comes to sharing. And social influencers that actually add additional commentary or context to a link that is shared are even more valuable.

Understanding your audience is critical when it comes to driving sharing activity. You want to get insight into not only how many people are sharing your content, but what type of people are doing the sharing. More importantly, you want to understand what type of digital experience triggers your most influential users to share content. Being able to predict what high-value influencers will likely share in the future will give your product development process a firm, data-driven grounding.

How Content Sharing Solves The Transient Problem

Jonathan — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:48:58 +0000

Traffic growth is the one metric that everybody understands. Whether you’re on the cutting edge of the digital space or if you’re just getting to grips with how to use Facebook, the concept of monitoring unique visitors and page views to a site is pretty easy to grasp. But simply monitoring audience in these fairly crude terms is no longer enough to give you real insight. Because growing audience isn’t necessarily the core challenge most brands face. Getting an audience to engage for the long-term is.

As somebody who’s spent many years running large-scale media Web properties I understand only too well the challenges in building an audience. But if you’re only interested in traffic and you have deep enough pockets it’s actually quite easy to buy eyeballs. From paid search campaigns to affiliate “related link” deals, there’s always a way to keep the growth trajectory moving. But while this might look good in your monthly Omniture and Google Analytics reports, it masks a couple of uncomfortable realities.

The first reality is simply about economics. Unless you’re selling a product, it’s very hard to get any kind of ROI by buying traffic. So for the vast majority of content sites it may be good for external optics (“Our traffic keeps growing!”) but it’s horrible for the bottom line.

Secondly, the type of audience you drive through these channels is likely to be less engaged and more transient. This is also true for users who visit your site through organic search. While there are many brands out there who’ve built a business that’s wholly dependent on the Google traffic funnel, the reality is that the type of customer you get is more transient by nature. They come to you to solve a specific problem or get a specific answer to a question, and then leave. The odds of them pro-actively returning the next day, or even the next week are slim. This is a dangerous game to play for many brands because short-term gratification starts to replace long-term relationships.

So growing an audience is great, but growing an audience that actually wants to stick around and come back to the party is even better. And that’s why content sharing is becoming the most important metric to measure.

Our research definitively shows that a customer that engages with your brand via a shared piece of content is far more valuable than one who stumbles across your site via a search engine. When a user visits a site from a shared link not only do they spend more time and explore more deeply, but they also exhibit much higher recall of the brands that they encounter. The stickiness factor of sharing is powerful and extremely real.

But these results shouldn’t be surprising. In a world where there’s too much content and too many choices, users are looking for filters to bring some order to the chaos of the digital space. For the longest time Google was the only filter in town, and it did (and still does) a good job. But as time has progressed even Google has struggled to stay ahead of the spammers and affiliate sites that continue to infest search results with junk links.

But when a friend – or a trusted colleague – surfaces a link there is an inherent assumption surrounding the quality and relevance of that link. These are people we know, trust and (hopefully) like and they act as a great filter – one that can’t be penetrated or gamed by scammers.

This is an important point. When we stumble across a link on Google we don’t **really** know how relevant it is until we click. But when we see a link shared by a friend, it’s already been partially validated. So when we click on that link we’re immediately more receptive to it and perhaps not as guarded – which opens us up to engage more with it.

All audiences are not created equally and as brands begin to focus more on not just the quantity but the quality aspect, content sharing will play a critical role in helping to augment their strategy. By understanding what inspires somebody to share content you can not only drive more traffic, but also drive better quality traffic. And for anyone suffering from the transient customer problem, that’s a great place to be.

Advertisers & The Sharing Conundrum

Jonathan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:48:41 +0000

Content sharing is becoming one of the most important engagement metrics for any brand to track. Our research suggests that users who access content via shared links spend more time with the content, and have higher recall of it. While this is great news for content creators, it can leave brand marketers wondering exactly what this means for them. In short, can a brand ever compel people to voluntarily share an ad campaign in the digital space?

Simple logic says no. Marketers are finally coming to the realization that 99.5 per cent of Internet users couldn’t care less about online display ads and have become conditioned into simply ignoring them. It doesn’t matter how big – or how intrusive – you make them, nobody is clicking. But that hasn’t stopped marketers from continuing to run display ads. Despite their lack of effectiveness when viewed through the crude lens of pure click-throughs, many continue to believe that they subtly re-inforce a brand’s messaging in the minds of consumers and thus have a role to play with respect to building brand awareness.

So if an average user doesn’t feel moved to simply click on an ad, it’s not too much of a leap to suggest that they’re absolutely never going to consider pro-actively **sharing** an ad with their social networks. While only a sample size of one, not only have I never shared an ad with my friends but I don’t recall seeing any ads that my friends have shared with me (I’m discounting some of the really bad infomercial ads that people have shared as a joke).

So if you’re a marketer what are you to do? You desperately want to get some authentic, social traction around your brand and to spark legitimate conversation but the odds seem stacked against you.

Understanding what compels users to actually want to share something is critical for any advertiser. Then developing the right campaign around these “sharability triggers” will help to eliminate some of the guesswork around a social campaign.

There are a few obvious ones to start-off with.

a) Utility runs through the very heart of the Web. Helping people solve problems quickly and efficiently is one of the things that the Internet does best. But most advertising isn’t useful. Brand marketers want you to believe that by purchasing their product you will be able to solve a specific problem, but the message itself offers very little real utility. Many advertisers would be well served by creating campaigns that help people solve problems.

b) Entertainment is the bed-fellow of utility. If we’re not solving a problem online, we like to be entertained. While some advertising attempts to be entertaining, most isn’t. That’s primarily because many attempts at entertainment in ad campaigns seem like contrived, artificial marketing messages. Developing something that’s in an authentic voice that people can connect with is tough, particularly when your ultimate goal is to sell a product. But authenticity is key to social sharing and if people – even for s second – believe that what they’re seeing isn’t real, there’s no way they’re going to pass it on.

c) Control has always been something that brands have ferociously guarded. If you’ve spent millions of dollars nurturing a brand it only makes sense that you want to protect that investment. But in the social sphere consumers increasingly believe that they own the brands they choose to engage with. They want to shape and manipulate a brand as they choose. Humans are compelled to share their fruits of creative self expression, and if your brand can help facilitate this you might get invited to the party.

Ultimately, the reality is that digital is not an easy advertising platform. Unlike TV and radio, the digital audience is rarely in a passive sit-back-and absorb state of mind. They’re doing something and thus advertising has to compete even harder for their attention.

They’re also in complete control of their own destiny when it comes to the experience. They can click away from a Web page in a nano-second and there are endless alternatives from which they can choose. So, unlike TV and radio digital is much more of a user-controlled platform.

While perhaps somewhat of a cliche, advertisers do need to think more-and-more of what they do as content. Of course the church/state line will alway be an issue and needs to be handled with care, but compelling content triggers sharing behavior in people and as advertisers get to grips with this it will help them start to get more social traction.

The Selfish Sharer

Jonathan — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:10:52 +0000

Sharing is perhaps the number one example of self-less behavior. As humans we share with others not for personal gain, but because we think it’s the right thing to do. Helping other people that are in greater need than we are seems to be – for many people at least – ingrained into the human psyche. But when it comes to sharing content online, the motivations are often more selfish and focused on the sharer rather than the recipients. In fact is “sharing” even the right word to describe what’s really going on?

Traditionally the act of sharing is very much about how your actions can benefit others. If I’m eating a sandwich for lunch and you’ve forgotten your wallet my nature dictates that I’ll offer you half of my sandwich. I don’t explicitly benefit from this arrangement – other than from the fact that you might now think I’m a nice(r) person – but individual gain isn’t the primary motivator for me. These types of scenarios are generally driven by an individual’s moral compass – i.e. we should be encouraged to help people at specific points in life if they have a need that they’re unable to directly satisfy.

Now let’s look at online content sharing. Does the same logic apply?

Well firstly, if I share a link on Facebook that points to an interesting story are other people directly benefiting? The answer is perhaps. Social discovery is becoming an important means by which people engage with new content and products. While it’s certainly not going to replace organic search **yet**, on principle it makes a lot more sense for a user to be more interested in a link surfaced by a real person in their trusted network than from a search engine algorithm that can easily be gamed by SEO “experts” and spammy affiliates. So if I share a link to a funny video on Twitter, I’d like to think that the people who click on it get some level of benefit from doing so. So while it may solve a need that most people don’t know they have yet (i.e. I didn’t know I had a need to see a video of a cat flushing a toilet until somebody sent it to me), it does still benefit the recipient.

But it’s the next point that I think is really critical, and this deals with the notion of what I choose to share with the rest of the world. Here’s where the comparison with my sandwich analogy above starts to crumble. If i’m eating a sandwich and you’re hungry, logic dictates that I should give you half of my sandwich. That’s because you have a need (hunger) and I have the direct means to satisfy it (the sandwich).

But in the world of content it’s very different. When you share content you are NOT responding to a direct need that somebody has and thus you have the freedom to share practically anything. While only a sandwich – and not my newspaper – can satisfy a friend’s lunchtime hunger, with content there are no such parameters. It’s a total free-for-all based on your own pro-active decisions, not on a reaction to a situation.

Which brings us on to what triggers people to share. Our research suggests that there are a number of key emotional components that compel individuals to share content. Some of these are fairly consistent throughout people (human triggers), while others are more audience specific (generational triggers). But there’s one that I want to call-out today because it somewhat goes against the very notion of what sharing is all about – and that’s the selfish trigger.

A key piece of what drives us to share content has roots in Planet Me. Because when somebody chooses to share something with their network they’re making a strong, definitive statement about the type of person they are. Our sharing activity helps sculpt our online identity in ways that are more powerful than anything else. And it’s very subtle. A link here. A video clip there. But over time our pattern of sharing makes strong statements to the rest of the world about how we’d like them to perceive us.

Think about some of the links you see on your Facebook feed on a day-to-day basis. You’ve probably got somebody who shares plenty of links to funny videos. There might be the guy who’s always posting music. Then there’s the political one. The person posting links to tech blogs. The **foodie**. The guy that likes to think he’s introducing you to something for the first time and thus deserves “in-the-know” status. Sharing is as much about self-expression and individual identity as it is about wanting to enrich the lives of others.

So from this we can draw two conclusions. Firstly, when developing new social campaigns it’s critical to look at content creation through this lens. Will sharing your content make somebody look good? Will it help them achieve a somewhat selfish goal of projecting the **right** image to the rest of the world? Don’t just think somebody is going to share your content because they think others might find it interesting.

And secondly, is “content sharing” even the right phrase to use? Because it’s not really sharing in the pure sense of the word. It’s almost about self-promotion and sharing is simply a happy by-product. Although I’m not sure this is ever going to stick. I think “Self-promote via Facebook” might be too long for a social media button!

Content Sharing: The Rear View Mirror Problem

Jonathan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:34:36 +0000

The beauty of the Web is that everything is measurable. But while there’s no shortage of data to analyze and digest, much of it looks at what happened in the past. The problem with historic data is that we are often compelled to simply look at what was successful in the past and copy it exactly, hoping to replicate the success. This is what I call the rear-view mirror problem, and for those of you looking to increase the social traction and virality of your content it’s not the best approach.

Here’s a typical scenario. You’re browsing through your Omniture or Google Analytics data for the previous month and you notice that - unexpectedly - an image slideshow of cute kittens sleeping next to cute puppies generated huge traffic. Not only was cats and puppies great in terms of uniques and page views, but it also generated some pretty significant sharing activity via social networks.

At this point the natural reaction would be one (or all) of the following:

a) This is amazing. We clearly need to produce more image slideshows.

b) This is amazing. We clearly need to produce more kittens and puppies stories

c) We need to product Cute Kittens and Cute Puppies: The Sequel by the end of the week

As humans our instinct is to – once we think we’ve found a winning formula – replicate it exactly without further question.

And sometimes this approach can work – to a point. Kittens and Puppies: The Sequel could be a huge hit, but by the time we reach Kittens and Puppies Part 9: They’re Back And This Time They’re Hungry the likelihood is that the traffic driving and shareability potential will have diminished considerably.

As an editor or creative person the biggest problem with Web data is that it simply tells you what was popular yesterday, or a week ago, or last month. If you’re lucky and have access to social media listening software, you’ll also be able to get a more real-time view into what your target audience is currently discussing and what topics are trending. This can be useful, but it doesn’t solve the problem that most Web data only tells us the “what” and not the “why”?

Why did so many people in your specific target audience feel compelled to share Kittens and Puppies? Which specific emotions were triggered – and by what – to drive sharing behavior?

In order to answer these questions we have to move away from the historical view of data, and move into a more predictive mode. What if we could analyze the Kittens and Puppies slideshow and extract some of the elements, narratives and themes that activate sharing behavior in your specific audience? And then what if we could take that data and use it to inspire new products, features and content that may not be a carbon copy of Kittens and Puppies but that includes certain core elements that we think drive sharing?

One of our core offerings at Bashki Generation is to help brands do just this. We’re eliminating some of the guesswork from social content sharing by working with clients to build a unique Sharing Index that is tailored to their specific brand, content and audience. This index consists of a framework that predicts what combination of elements will be required in a new feature to trigger sharing behavior. We then take that predictive data and use it to inform our creative development process, ensuring that all our ideas have a grounding in something tangible.

Understanding what provokes a user to share content is going to become more-and-more important for brands, especially as social discovery and personal recommendations drive much stronger engagement than other channels (i.e. organic Google search). We really are entering a new era of The Sharing Economy and – in this rapidly changing sphere – understanding the science of sharing will become increasingly important in the war for user attention.

Google News: Wicked Games

Jonathan — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:05:38 +0000

Gamification – it seems – is the current word du jour in the digital space. More and more companies are exploring ways to add game mechanics to sectors that don’t naturally lend themselves to gaming. Think Farmville for personal finance, or FourSquare for health. The latest big-gun to jump into the mix is Google – which last week rolled out a new badges component on Google News. But while Google attempts to convince the world it really does understand social with its Google + product, whether it truly understands the nuances of gaming is definitely still up for question.

If you’re new to the gamification party the logic goes something like this. Gaming has grown to be a hugely popular pastime and in 2011 the industry is predicted to see consumer spending of about $74 billion. Console games, social games, mobile games – the world of gaming is going through an explosive phase of growth. Gaming also appeals to a wide range of generations. You’re just as likely to see a woman in her 40s playing a few rounds of Bejeweled online as you are to find a young Millennial sneaking a quick game of Angry Birds on his/her iPhone. The generational span of gaming is truly very impressive.

Games are also extremely engaging. The average time a consumer spends with a game leaves any other digital experience in the dust, and the number of times a user will return to play the same game is also off the charts. So with its mass appeal and high engagement, everyone wants to try sprinkling some of the gaming fairy dust over their product.

Our friends over at Vivity Labs recently launched a new iPhone app called Arookoo (full discosure: I had some early input into this product) which attempts to add a gameplay element to walking for fitness. A number of personal finance-centric companies are exploring ways to add gamification to their products – check out Offermatic for a good example.

Which brings us back to Google News and its new badges product. The offering is quite simple. As you read more stories in a particular section you can earn a badge that you can choose to either hide or display to the rest of the world. Exactly what the point is of earning a badge only to then keep it to yourself is not clear to me, but it’s an option. So if you read a lot of politics stories you’ll earn the politics badge, or zany cat stories will get you the zany cats badge – and so on.

The logic behind Google News badges is a little bit baffling. It feels as if somebody at Google was instructed to clone Foursquare, just without the fun and rewarding parts. The result is a service that seems at best, gimmicky and at worst totally irrelevant.

The whole point behind gamification is that you incentivize somebody to complete a specific task by giving them something, which in-turn enhances their social status. It’s about competing with others but ultimately still rewarding yourself. And it’s about having fun. Games should be – if nothing else – entertaining.

Which is why Google News badges is so bizarre. The rewards system seems anaemic and irrelevant. No average human is going to proactively read a bunch of Science and Nature stories on Google News just because they can earn a badge. They’re going to read them because the content seems compelling.

In addition, who really cares if you’ve earned a silver Money and Finance badge? It doesn’t signify any kind of achievement because – well – you’ve simply read some text. There was no particular obstacle to overcome, other than clicking a link to get to an article. You need some kind of gameplay in gamification.

Also it doesn’t give you any real status in the community either. Just because you’ve read a lot of articles on a particular subject by no means makes you an authority on it. So bragging to all your friends that you’ve read 18 articles on the debt ceiling in one week doesn’t really say very much about you, other than you probably have too much time on your hands.

Google News badges is akin to any website owner deciding to award badges to people who simply decide to read their content. In short, it’s a complete mis-representation of what gamification is.

Many content owners – especially those who deal with fairly dry, un-sexy subject matter – should look at gamification as a way to engage people in an unconventional, bue powerful way. But don’t make Google’s mistake and simply try and replicate features that already exist on other sites, without fully knowing why.