FreshNetworks Blog

A simple social graph

The social graph is not a new thing. The concept has been spoken about since at least the 1960s and is simply a way of representing (drawing) all the connections between people. Imagine a small island community of three people with no links to the outside world; you could represent this community as a social graph – showing all three connected to each other. As well as people we might add on other things – places, events, animals – and so use a social graph to show the connections between all of these objects rather than just between people.

The concept of the social graph is not a new thing, and it is not unique to social media. But what social networks do provide is a systematised way of storing these objects and these connections. Facebook is currently the largest social graph in the world but any social network builds a social graph based on what you tell them about yourself, who you connect to and the actions you do.

An example of Facebook, the biggest social graph

Facebook, for example, knows who you are friends with (and who they are friends with). It knows when you and a friend are connected by an event (that you both attend) or by a photo (that you are both in), or by a film (that you both ‘Like’), or by some music (that you have both listened to on Spotify). It then stores this data in a systemised way and so has structured data on you, your life and the way all of the things around you connect. Think of it as a mass of data that can be used to help to define an individual. And Facebook gives brands access to this through their ‘Open Graph’ API.

Benefits for Facebook

For Facebook the benefits of building and storing these social graphs is obvious – the more they know about an individual, the more they can tailor and personalise their experience and the more useful Facebook becomes to them. They can use this data to monetise the network – mainly by selling targeted advertising. They currently earn almost $1.20 a year from every individual Facebook member, and the more data they collect the better then can personalise the experience and the more they can earn. Finally, the quicker they build an individual’s social graph, and the more information they capture in it, the bigger the barrier they build to others being able to come in and compete with them.

Benefits for Facebook members

For the individual members of Facebook there are benefits too. Whilst personalisation can be difficult to get right, there is no doubt that a personlised experience can be much more useful to an individual than a more generic one. It helps you suggest things that they might actually want to read, things you might actually be interested in, and even show you adverts for things you might actually want to buy. The more data you share with Facebook, the better they can personalise your experience and more useful you will find it. Of course, you need to remember to be informed about what you choose to share and why.

Benefits for brands

It is probably fair to say that brands so far have not taken the most advantage of the social graph. Partly this is because many are still experimenting with social media and many think of it just as a way to engage and build their own communities and networks, rather than exploring the pure data benefits that they can get. But applied correctly, brands can use this data to provide a better targeted and more personalised service, and even to help shape products themselves. Whether you are Amazon, using Facebook’s social graph to help you choose products for your friends’ birthdays, or KLM using Facebook and LinkedIn social graphs to help you choose who to sit next to on the plane, there are opportunities across sectors and audience types. In fact the biggest barrier to brands using the social graph effectively is their own creativity and ability to explore how the data they can get from social graphs (including Facebook) can help your business. And the biggest opportunity is to explore ways that data from these social graphs can be combined with a brands own proprietary data to build a bespoke data set that can let you develop products and personalise services for customers.

All brands should be exploring and understanding the different social graphs out there (including Facebook’s) and the data that these can offer. Social media is much more than just a means of communicating to and engaging with people. In fact the possibilities that this kind of data offers can often be much more interesting.

Image by DailyPic via Flickr

Through December we’ve run an informal series on social media in 2011 – trends and developments that we are witnessing at FreshNetworks with our work with clients across Europe. Social media budgets are set to rise across Europe and they are not just in marketing or communications functions. The real shift that has started in 2010 and will develop and mature in 2011 is a move from social media marketing to social business. Recognising and capitalising on the fact that social media has impacts and benefits across a business and using social media strategically where it can have the biggest and most important impact.

The task in 2011 will be for brands to consider where social media can have the biggest impact across their business and how they will adapt and change to realise these benefits.

Here are five trends that we are seeing in social media marketing (and beyond) and that we expect to see more of in 2011.

1) Social media marketing budgets set to rise

Research shows that not only are budgets for social media marketing rising, but an increasing number of brands are prioritising this spend over other media. The truth behind this may just be that spend in this area has moved from being exceptional or experimentation to more regular spending. Or it may be that more areas of the business are starting to see social media as a a core part of their activities. But whatever the cause, overall budgets to spend on social media is rising and will rise more in 2011.

This will reinforce the need to make sure that brands are using social media strategically, and that it is not just being used by one function or team. A brand that is just using social media as a PR tool is almost certainly missing out on other opportunities or ways in which it can help.

2) Location-based marketing should be about more than just vouchers

Location-based tools and services continue to develop and with them opportunities for location-based marketing. If 2010 was the year that these tools developed and were used by more people, 2011 will be the year that more brands use them, where appropriate, in a way that adds value. We should see more location-based marketing and more innovation with these tools.

Innovation means both doing old things in new ways, but also doing new things altogether. Whilst there is a role for using location-based services to distribute vouchers and discounts (of the ‘check in here and get 10% off’ variety), location-based services can and should be used for so much more. The trend in 2011 should be for experimentation and trying completely new things, things that we can only do because we know where people are.

3) The rise and rise of the social graph

The social graph has yet to be used effectively by many brands. We’re seeing some innovation – such as the use of Facebook’s social graph on Amazon.com to tell you when it is a friend’s birthday and suggest books they might like based on their Facebook profile. But such uses are rare at the moment.

The real opportunity for the social graph to bring social elements to an existing website – allowing a brand to pull the best and most useful information and relaitonships from Facebook and other sites to their own site. In doing so they break the argument there has often been between engaging on platforms like Facebook or on your own site. With social graph you can engage people offsite and onsite using the same data.

4) We should all be talking about value from social media

As brands spend more on social media, they will be forced to prove the value they are getting from this spend. This will move us from measuring what can be measured (Twitter followers, traffic etc) and working out how these show benefit, to having to show the business benefit that is being realised by using social media. It may be a reduction in contact-centre calls because you are servicing customers online, it may be an increase in spend per year from those customers you are engaging online, or it may be direct sales you can attribute to activities in social media.

2011 will see brands building models and showing the value that they are getting from their expenditure on social media. We will move from measuring what can be measured to showing value.

5) Social media is not just about marketing

Finally social media has always been about much more than just marketing. It is about communications, public relations, customer service, insight, new product development. In fact there are many areas of a brand that can benefit from engaging with people through social media. And the areas where a brand can realise most value may not be in marketing but in other areas. 2010 has seen increased discussion of ‘social business’ – where social is used across a business, changing processes, products and services to bring more value to the brand and to consumers. In 2011 we will hear much more about social business, and probably less about social media marketing.

Image by foxypar4 via Flickr

There has long been a debate in social media marketing between engaging people where they are at the moment (on Facebook or Twitter for example), and bringing them together to engage on your own site (such as your own forums or online community). This is, to some extent, an unhelpful argument. There has been no clear-cut answer, and the truth is that it all depends what you are using social media for, who your audience is, and how you want to engage them. The best approach has often been to combine both – in a hub-and-spoke model where you engage both in social networks and on your own site.

Through 2011 we expect this issue to become at the same time more complicated and more simple with the continued rise of the social graph.

To date, Facebook’s social graph has been underused by brands. It’s not surprising. The concept is quite complicated, and it also challenges what we think we know about social media marketing. Including the debate about going where people are or bringing them to your site. Social graph lets you do both. At the same time.

The social graph, at its simplest, allows you to use your friends, likes and other interactions in Facebook when you are browsing other sites. To put this in practical terms – on the Amazon.com site, you can use social graph to generate recommendations of things your friends might want you to buy them. It will recommend authors a friend says they like on Facebook, or if they say they like Football it will recommend products that might appeal to them. And what’s more it will recommend things for certain friends around their birthday so you get useful advice on what to buy people when it is relevant for them.Social graph brings insight and social to the shopping experience on Amazon.com – adding value and doing something that just hasn’t been possible before.

Through 2011 we expect to see more experimentation with social graph. More brands using the data and information on Facebook to add value to a consumer’s experience on their own site. This is part of a broader trend towards distributing social across a company’s consumer journey and contact points, and even across their business. But that’s the topic for another post in this informal series on social media in 2011.

This post is part of an informal series: Social Media in 2011.