Page 320 - Social Media Marketing

chapter 11: THE SOCIAL GRAPH ■ Recall the importance of profile completion. If members can’t identify each
other, they won’t connect and build relationships. Think about it: Would you accept a
LinkedIn connection request from “asdf ghjkl” in “anytown, usa”? (I actually received
that request and promptly moved it to the trash.) If members are not completing pro-
files, add the tools that help them to do this, as is done on LinkedIn: LinkedIn shows
you, as a member, the specific steps to take next to complete your social profile. Ensure
that the networking platform you select supports something similar, either directly
or which can be built. Many social applications offer a programming extension or
an application programming interface (API), which itself offers a method by which
extended capabilities can be easily added to the core platform functions.

Social Graph APIs

If you are interested in exploring the API—the programming extensions that can open up the
social graph for your social applications—you may want to visit the Google and Facebook API
298 reference sites. There are, of course, others but these will provide a useful starting point for those
so inclined. You can always do more on your own!

http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

Here’s a tip: Figure out the capabilities you need in regards to how much you
want to assist or suggest connections and similar friending activities, and then look for
a pathway to implementing them before you select a platform. When you know what
you want, it’s lots easier to find it.

In addition to the tools that focus directly on social interactions and the things
that facilitate them, consider contests, reputation and profile completion bonuses, and
other incentives that encourage profile completion and social interaction. Relationships
are possibly the single most important gating factor in the development of a strong
community experience. Figure 11.4 shows LinkedIn’s profile completeness indicator. As
noted, relationships and the content sharing they enable are absolutely key to the pro-
gression toward engagement with your brand, product, or service.

Beyond the profile, what else can you do? The social profile—and its relative
completeness—is certainly important in facilitating connections. But there are also
active steps that can be taken to suggest friends, to recommend content (and hence
content authors), and similar actions that help drive connections within a community.
Facebook, for example, regularly recommends that friend requests be sent between
members who are not currently friends, but have a number of mutual friends within
the network. If Tom knows Jane, and Jane knows Mike, maybe Tom would have