There’s a lot of buzz at the moment around “social” aspects of software, websites and so forth; so much so that the word is starting to lose its meaning. It’s an important consideration nonetheless, because humans are social creatures and the best kind of marketing is the kind that other people do for you, for free.
As usual, though, lots of companies get it subtly wrong, thinking that adding social functionality or a community aspect is enough. Social features aren’t a silver bullet; they’re actually sort of besides the point.
Games which automatically tweet your achievements are an example of such a ham-fisted, confused approach. That kind of thing irritates and alienates those you’re trying to attract, and indeed damages the reputation of your existing customers amongst their friends or peers. Sure, it gets eyeballs for a brief moment, but the fall-off and collateral damage are horrendous. People don’t share things that way; it’s not organic and it reeks of necktie-wearing sleazy marketeering.
Building in social features for their own sake isn’t a route to massive success. Anyone who tries to tell you that taking an arbitrary app and adding Twitter or Facebook integration (or adding a forum to your website, or adding a StumbleUpon or Digg link, or Reputations, or Medals, or global high scores) will automatically make your customer base mushroom, is guilty of either stupidity or downright dishonesty. It doesn’t work that way, because people don’t work that way.
Here’s the reality: people don’t just share things because they have the ability to do so. People share things they want others to experience. It’s about the thing, not about the sharing. I’m not sure how to make that more obvious.
You don’t succeed at social/viral marketing just because you make it a little easier to share, and nor do you succeed based on the raw, native appeal of the experience. Rather, it’s about shareability.
Shareability is the degree to which you want someone else to have the same response to a thing that you had. One company that understands this point is Apple. They don’t just make things that you want to have; they make things you want others to have too. Ditto for Nintendo, particularly with the Wii. And the real kicker is that their stuff is particularly easy for other people to experience, because it’s easier to use in the first place. So, it’s an easy decision to share it.
That’s why focusing on social features is a skewed approach; you’re targeting a possible means to an end, rather than the end itself. It’s a classic error; exactly the kind of strategy that comes from ponderous corporations, last-century thinking, and/or click-counting cynicism.
The problem is that you’re supplying the “how” for sharing, and neglecting the “why”. What you should be doing is spending all that energy (and every penny of that budget) designing an experience that doesn’t just benefit from the participation of others, nor even that requires others, but rather that your users will actually want others to enjoy. That’s the critical point. Write it down somewhere.
At this point, marketeers will talk about reducing barriers to sharing (they’ll likely use fashionable words like “friction” too), and how important that is. They’re wrong; it’s really not that important, because your customers will find a way. Seriously, do you doubt that for even a second?
Sharing doesn’t happen because you create the mechanism for it; it happens because you create the motivation. Indeed, when the users wants to share something, they will find a way to do so even if you haven’t provided one. So spend time on motivation, not mechanism. Don’t give money to people who claim to be able to “social-up” your arbitrary product; you’re doing it wrong.
If you want your customers to do your marketing, you need to be thinking about more than high-scores or ad-hoc network games or multiple user accounts. For real people, the key sharing motivator is joy; the natural human desire to share joy with people we care about. Apple has this down. Do you?
It’s not enough to be social; you need to be shareable.
That nail must be hurtin’ after having been hit on the head so accurately and soundly!
Hell, they’ll find a way if you go out of your way to make it impossible; ask the recording industry.
“Sharing doesn’t happen because you create the _mechanism_ for it; it happens because you create the _motivation_.”
Very well said. This is going to stick in my brain.
I agree totally. Question is that how to achieve sharablity easily ? I mean easy way to share.
Currently we know :
– email
– twitter
– facebook
etc
Those way do not need you to build your own community , just use the existing pop communities.
Good idea ! I will use this idea in my game/app later.
Friction matters, because users have different thresholds for sharing.
For a truly stellar experience, they’ll go the extra mile, quit your app, launch Safari, get a link, launch Tweetie, compose the post. For something that raises a chuckle or a laugh? Not so much.
I’ve got concrete experience of this. On a news site I edit, great stories that we knew should have a much larger reach were getting no love. So we moved the Facebook recommend button out of the share-box ghetto and on to the bottom of the stories. Result: 250% increase in Facebook traffic; long-term increase in audience.
Reducing friction is about increasing the number of users who will talk about you.
Of course, everyone should aim for the absolutely stellar. But there’s no point in throttling your social reach because of a “build it and they will come” mentality.
Also: I fear the success of FarmVille and Bejewelled show that tweeting or sharing results doesn’t have a horrendous fall-off at all. People like us might hide FarmVille updates and friends, but it is rapidly connecting a network of nothingness between those who don’t.
Bejewelled is an even better example: simply by allowing people to boast to other players about their success they went to the next level, with an *identical* product. Sure, people might have manually composed an update saying “I just got 50,000 on Bewjewelled”, but the software made it easier and less embarrassing — it’s boasting on your behalf.
Being shareable is one thing, but neither Farmville nor Bejewelled nor any of the the hundreds of scuzzy little apps would have made it out of the gate without offering to share for their users. Friction would have killed them.
Of course, your app should aim for the sort of joy that people will want to share. FarmVille, amazingly, inspires that sort of joy in some people. But once you think you’ve got that joy, you should make it as easy as possible to share it.
There’s a lot of joy in the little plastic box. Do you want them talking about yours, or someone else’s?
“Here’s the reality: people don’t just share things because they have the ability to do so. People share things they want others to experience. ”
Maybe for folk that care; but i’m afraid the reality, especially for games you mention, is simply the ‘look what I achieved/won’ and the ‘I’m better than you mentality’.
You mention games, and you also mentioned the automatic feature some have – thats not people sharing, that’s the game sharing – and it feeds into the ‘I’m better than you’ once more. Bonaldi above pretty much has it covered.
Farmville is the perfect example. You get this status update from somone else – but – you’re obviously better than them. So you pay up, and everyone else gets a message saying how good you are. Thats what this is all about, it’s generating business. It’s marketing. It’s not about sharing at all.
So, for ‘social’ games at least, it’s certainly not a confused approach. It’s carefully made to entice those who will pay up to appear better – and there are _lots_ of these players around. $600m for a single game shows us when executed correctly this shit works, and why we are seeing the flood of others coming in.
You’re right about one thing, a key motivator is joy. Which is why the illusion of being better than X, Y and Z is such a money maker.
Although I agree that you need to be shareable for people to want to share, by integrating social features in a smart way, you can incentivize people to share.
For example, on this article http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/12859/37-Startup-Insights.aspx, the author makes a clever use of the [tweet] links to encourage people to share.
You may be shareable, but do you allow your users to share at their full potential?
Agree, Matt.
Most of the time, when people share, they do so to connect with those who had (or will have) the same experience. This is something that humans are well wired for.
Another thing that we’re wired for is being acknowledged and rewarded – FourSquare turned sharing into a game with badges and statuses, and it’s working very well for them.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
[...] Sharable Experiences It’s verbose, so here’s the td;dr – social media integration is overblown, it’s not enough to be able to share, it’s being worthy of being shared. [...]
another -ability to add to my references. findability, designability, usability, accessibility, searchability……
shareability, added. nicely done! thanks