Excellent Social Platform Engagement Checklist

Written by Matthijs Roumen on May 25th, 2010


I personally tend to dislike checklists, published over blogs that add up numbers of actions which are clearly pulled together to form an unthoughtful list. This checklist from LukeW is different. It’s a list that looks like it has been thought through over and over again to not miss out any points when it comes to engaging users in your social platform. The author itself calls it a high-level checklist for social web applications.

whether its about the most basic elements to social motivational factors, this list of LukeW has them all. Read on after the fold.

The list adds up several questions every social developer should ask himself when creating a social platform. The questions are divined in the categories Core Needs, Core Social, Basic Behaviors, Motivators and Relationships.

Core Needs

These questions address the most basic elements of any service: what does it do it, for who, and how?

• Need: what is the existing problem we are solving for people?
• Segment: who really has this need (primary audience)?
• Measurably better: how is our solution to the problem substantially better than current solutions people employ?

Core Social

Having very focused answers to these questions really matters. They attempt to address “what’s in it for me?” and why that brings people back.

• Identity: do people’s contributions make them look good/better?
• Connections: does using the product build deeper/better connections between people?
• Daily engagement: what activity brings people back every day?
• Reengagement: if people don’t come every day on their own, what brings them back?

Basic Behaviors

Have you considered how people generally behave and how your product accounts for or takes advantage of that?

• Least resistance: is there an easy path to people’s goals?
• Small commitments: how can initial commitments be small and scale up?
• Reciprocity: is there a perceived sense of debt in the activities people are doing?
• Bonding: is is possible for people to do things synchronously with others?
• Dopamine Loop: what kinds of information can people find of interest to them?

Motivators

These questions get you to think about the ways your product can encourage appropriate and valuable behavior from people.

• Status: is there an ability to increase your standing among people?
• Feedback Loops: how do people get responses to their actions?
• Social proof: can people follow the lead of others to make decisions?
• Sequencing: can activities be broken down into sequential goals or challenges?
• Ownership bias: how much will people value their contributions?
• Scarcity: is there limited availability that encourages people to take action?
• Set completion: will people be able to create collections and curate them?

Relationships

What kinds of relationships are you focusing on in your product?

• Strong ties: how does the product allow people to interact with the closest 7 (or less) people to them?
• Weak ties: how does the product allow people to interact with much more but less important connections?

-
I think this list is rather complete and could be used in various sessions during the social design process. Furthermore, it could be a really useful list of requirement for the client to see an online social platform isn’t just about connecting friends and/or colleagues. What are your thoughts on this list?

Continue

60% of US marketers reporting they measured performance in click-throughs

MAY 7, 2010 

ROI lags behind in measurement

Online marketing has been touted for its measurability, a quality that should make it easy for marketers to determine effectiveness and value for money. Despite widespread recognition that the click-through does not measure the full effect of an online ad—even ones placed with direct response objectives—and calls for better branding metrics, many marketers still rely on the easy-to-track click as their top performance metric.

A March 2010 survey by Chief Marketer showed the click remained on top, with 60% of US marketers reporting they measured performance in click-throughs. Fewer than two-fifths measured overall return on investment (ROI).

Those responses were similar to the 2009 edition of the same survey, and Chief Marketer suggested respondents were sticking with “old-school metrics” while paying lip service to the importance of ROI.

Similarly, Collective reported that in February 2010, click-throughs were the most common measurement of ad network performance, used by 64% of responding advertisers.

Datran Media found in December 2009 that marketers worldwide considered conversions the most important success metric, with nearly 90% saying it was “very important.” Click-throughs were rated important by 56.7% of respondents. But when Datran asked what types of measurement marketers actually used, clicks came out on top, with 72% of respondents tracking them.

These measurement practices left one-quarter of respondents to the Chief Marketer survey unsure whether interactive campaigns produced greater ROI than traditional marketing efforts.

The CMO Council’s “State of Marketing” survey did not ask about click-throughs specifically, but found marketers worldwide were most likely to measure their campaigns through page views, registrations, and the volume and origin of site traffic.

Asked about their online marketing performance measurement ability, the plurality of respondents to that survey (44%) were either working on increasing their capabilities or “struggling” to put a value on their interactive spending.

“Marketers’ familiarity with clicks is only one factor that contributes to its continued usage as the top metric,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. “Click are easy to count, too, and therefore an inexpensive metric to gather.

“In contrast,” Mr. Hallerman said, “measuring either brand effectiveness or the indirect effects of online ads—such as how display ads contribute to search clicks—is more complex and typically costs more to accomplish that just tallying up clicks.”

Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.

Check out today’s other article, “When to Respond to Negative Buzz.”

Continue