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Landscape: what does recent research tell us about social media usage

Social Media and Search: what influence does social media behavior have on organic search

Social (search) Behavior: yes, another form of SEO to think about

The UX of Social Media: whether you design for it or not, users will have an experience on your site that can have a

positive or negative impact on your client’s bottom line. The choice is up to you.

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Universal McCann Social Wave 7 (2013)

What has dropped off over the last 5 years is:

• read blogs down (niche specific behavior)

• leave comment on blog (most have discontinued due to spam)

• start a blog (like puppies, care and feeding get in the way),

• uploading photos (b/c of camera and tablet phones and advent of super device storage

• insecurity about cloud maybe)

• listen to radio online.

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Brand community membership went up over 20%. Why?

Hubspot 2010 survey

67% of US twitter users are more likely to buy from Brands that they follow

42% use twitter to learn about product/services

41% to provide opinions on products/services

31% to ask for opinions about product/services

28% to look for discounts/sales

21% to purchase products/services

19% to seek customer support

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They want an “inside source” for information on the brand and advance news

They share because they want their network to support their decision to declare for the brand or someone influential

in their network encouraged them.

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No doubt that mobile is growing. However, it is not at the expense of desktop or laptop usage.

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70% of the top ranking factors are social signals

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Paul Adams Designing for Social Interaction, Boxes and Arrows, April 2010

Strong Ties: support existing means of interaction instead of providing a new one (text, email, phone). Avoid generic

labels like “friends” as that overpopulates group and diminishes relevance. Of the 470+ “friends” I have on FB, how

many are really friends?

Weak Ties: trust a factor, they may know more about certain things but are trusted less, show shared ties or expose

sources of knowledge to increase trust

Granovetter: weak ties better source of information due to expanse of circle - strong ties are usually grouped

together

Temporary Ties: Twitter followers would be temporary ties

Temporary tie is a single or small group of interaction, generally around information need or shared interest

(forums) (ask person on street for directions, Google or Yahoo answers, Quora) - also task completion: Most do not

treat all social channels or connections within the channel the same support established strong tie communication,

not replace with own messaging system

Design for

• Build system for increasing reputation.

• Allow feedback on one another

• Build trust: show shared connections, groups or interests (LinkedIn)

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Pareto Principal with regard to social networks: Facebook research shows that most action on social networks

occurs within a small subset of connections

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

864 million daily active users on average for September 2014

703 million mobile daily active users on average for September 2014

1.35 billion monthly active users as of September 30, 2014

1.12 billion mobile monthly active users as of September 30, 2014

Approximately 82.2% of our daily active users are outside the US and Canada

User Interactions in Social Networks and their Implications, Wilson et al. 2009

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Sometimes use social network for information seeking by posing questions there = Social Search

Directed: person to person, e.g. Direct message or pointed to specific entity

Public: “can anyone…?”

Searching repositories: niche specific, wide net: e.g. quora question and answer

For Asia = more questions of professional nature, fewer rhetorical inquiries

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http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/teevan/publications/papers/chi10-social.pdf

50.6% have used status message to ask questions.

Trustworthy sources

Query too subjective for a search engine

Search engine is too hard

Want a specific audience

Men: technology questions, women : home/family

Young: more invitation questions, less like to ask recommendation questions

“reading through search results is too cumbersome”

Question types are:

Recommendation most popular

Factual knowledge

Rhetorical

Invitation

Favors

Social Connection (does anyone know someone who…)

Offer

What Do People Ask Their Social Networks and Why? A Survey Study of Status Message Q&A Behavior

Meredith Ringel Morris, Jamie Teevan, Katrina Panovich

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Intrinsic vs Image-Related Utility in Social media: Why do People Contribute Content to Twitter: Toubia and

Stephan 2013

Intrinsic: the poster derives a direct benefit specific to the content

Image-Related: individual receives an increase in stature to others – e.g. more followers (followers need to be

earned, so this is an informative social signal and posting is a means to this end)

“

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It is no a requirement: Apple has NO SOCIAL MEDIA access on its website

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Most common placement is upper right corner of site chrome, right next to the most popular girl in school Search.

That takes them off the page. If they don’t need search, they rarely look/click in upper right corner.

Global and footer locations do not get user attention because on the basis of what would they want to follow you?

Make the invitation less generic

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Zipf’s Law of least effort

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Coca Cola FB post Sept 27, 2014

Users like to share motivational, feel-good messages

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http://mashable.com/2014/11/12/user-experience-tips/

UX is not just about Interfaces

UX touches the product itself, not just the promotion

Experience happens anyway – you only get to design whether you’ll design for it

UX uses multiple research approaches

UX will subsume much of what currently counts as digital marketing

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This is more about expectation that content quality. 6 tweets would indicate that this was not a widely appreciated

post.

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http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2014/24641/three-traits-of-shareworthy-content

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Based on what and why?

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Online Product Opinions: Incidence, Evaluation, and Evolution

Wendy W. Moe, David A. Schweidel,2014

"positive ratings environments increase posting incidence, whereas negative ratings environments discourage

posting. Our results also indicate important differences across individuals in how they respond to previously posted

ratings, with less frequent posters exhibiting bandwagon behavior and more active customers revealing

differentiation behavior”

"Schlosser (2005) also showed in a lab environment that posters adjust their product evaluations depending on the

opinions expressed by others. As these studies demonstrate, a ratings environment can take on a life of its own,

sometimes to the detriment of the product or brand to which it is dedicated. In some cases, the posted content

provides a fair evaluation of the product or brand. However, as illustrated in the aforementioned studies, posted

content can also reflect the influence of others.“

"First, previously posted ratings may affect the incidence with which individuals choose to contribute their

own opinions, which we refer to as a selection effect. Second, whereas some customers may prefer to provide

their comments such that they will stand out from the crowd, others may prefer to be consistent with the

majority. Thus, in addition to selection effects, there may also be adjustment effects where those individuals

who ultimately decide to post revise their evaluations upward or downward based on previously posted

comments."

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Hubspot 2010 survey

67% of US twitter users are more likely to buy from Brands that they follow

42% use twitter to learn about product/services

41% to provide opinions on products/services

31% to ask for opinions about product/services

28% to look for discounts/sales

21% to purchase products/services

19% to seek customer support

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Jared Spool

51,000 followers

39,000 tweets (a good many poking @united)

When asked why he continues to use United, he responded that it has be best service offerings out of Boston

(where he lives).

The IA tweet sparked a conversation that included many luminaries in the field offering suggestions.

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Inlinks: If a blog post has a large number of inlinks, then it is more likely to be influential.

Discussion: The influence of a blog post could depend on the amount of discussion it initiated.

Little or no discussion = did not arouse others' interests or their contents were not appealing.

Large number of comments indicates that the particular blog post affects many people so they care to

write comments.

External References: If a blog post refers to many articles or other blog posts, it is less likely to be an innovative

piece

Keller and Berry have listed innovativeness as an essential property of being influential in a physical

community.

The number of outlinks reflects how innovative a blog post is.

Content Quality: An influential blog post is often well written., i.e. eloquent, descriptive, logical, insightful,

authoritative, rhetoric, relatively self-contained.

The length of a blog post (¸) is a heuristic measure checking if post is influential or not

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43 comments

120 FB likes

2045 twitter shares

200 G+ shares

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Should be more than just placing SM icons on each page (why would anyone share a travel insurance form TY

page - SmashingMag)

Social web tools must incorporate the concepts of strong (care deeply about) and weak ties (loose connections)

Most have less than 10 strong ties = circle of truest

Current designs are too egalitarian...treats all content the same

Consider trade off between communication and trust

Ease of exposing network to people they trust

Rationalize the action: not just follow us on FB but follow us on FB to get [fill in blank]

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