user management platform for the social web

The Engaged User: Bridging Your Website and the Social Networks

MARKETING BRIEF

While incorporating social media into marketing strategy is becoming standard practice, many organizations

still struggle with how to make the most of opportunities created by social media platforms and tools. It has

been well documented that just having a Facebook page or sending the occasional tweet are not enough to

have a significant, sustainable impact on business results. The good news is that there are multiple ways to

take advantage of the social media space and one of the most effective places to start is actually from your

own website

If we step back and look at the value of social networks, it becomes immediately obvious that just because

there is a new ecosystem in which to operate, the fundamentals of interaction remain unchanged. The

customer experience still matters and luckily there are multiple ways to create powerful online experiences

that are customized to the user. The objective should be for a user who is on your website to stay engaged

with content, products, services or other key parts of the site.

The engaged user can now become a proponent of your content, products or services. This is similar to a

customer picking up the phone, or telling the neighbor about a great experience they just had, or a deal they

found. In this case you make it easy for the online user to share that information back to their friends on the

social networks. In doing so, a bridge is created between your website and the social networks, and that bridge

is built on the strongest marketing material available – social influence through an engaged user.

Traffic to your website from a social media platform is, by its very nature, more valuable than traffic from

other sources. That may be a bold statement, but when you think about what a social network like Facebook,

Twitter, or LinkedIn has been created for, and you look at the data, it makes sense. The Nielsen Company

published research showing that global consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social networking

sites in December 2009 (Nielsen Blog). This represents an 82% increase from the same time a year ago.

Facebook continues to be the number one global social networking destination and people are spending more

time per month on the site – almost six hours according to Nielsen, but the concurrent meteorite rise in Twitter

usage shows that consumers like variety.

People spend time on social networks and share information with people who are interesting and important

to them. At the same time, they are interested in learning from these same people, hearing their stories and

experiences, and checking out what they think is important. Because trust is high among peers,

JANRAIN MARKETING BRIEF | www.janrain.com | 888.563.3082 PG1Copyright © 2010 Janrain Inc. All rights reserved.

user management platform for the social web MARKETING BRIEF

recommendations and messages exchanged among friends are more likely to resonate than those from

a company directly to an individual. Thus, you can augment your organization’s push marketing strategy

(advertising or email marketing, for example) with a pull strategy that empowers your users to promote their

online interactions with your brand to their friends on the social networks.

Here’s how it works. You have a visitor on your website. Whether the focus of your site is commerce, content

or community, one goal is to have that visitor log in or register and become an engaged user who can do more

– make a purchase, contribute to the conversation with a comment or expertise, or post content. Streamlining

the log in and registration process by enabling users to leverage an existing identity profile from Facebook,

Google, Twitter, Yahoo, or other providers is critical.

Once the user is engaged on your site, make it easy for that person to communicate back to the social

networks of their choice without leaving your site. Activity-based social publishing tools enable the user to

perform this action from within the flow of your website experience.

Once the user publishes activity or content to

a social network, your website has a presence

there as well – and the presence has been

defined by the user. This is critical to note. The

user has found something of interest on your

website and then called that specific piece out

to promote to his or her community.

The engaged user is an effective filter both

for their community and your website. Online

users are overwhelmed by the amount of

information and data resources online, and

organizations need to stand above the noise

to be both heard and seen as credible. When

an engaged user on your site decides to share

information back to a social network (see Figure 1), it

is a win for both their network and your organization. The user’s network benefits from gaining a window into

his/her thoughts and activities online, and your organization benefits by enabling word of mouth marketing

through its users.

JANRAIN MARKETING BRIEF | www.janrain.com | 888.563.3082 PG2Copyright © 2010 Janrain Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 1: Example of a user publishing a comment from within a website back to a social network.

user management platform for the social web MARKETING BRIEF

Instead of a standalone Facebook page that you need to drive traffic to, the engaged user is doing that piece

for you. But this is just the beginning. People spend time on social networks to learn and share. When an

engaged user on your site publishes information back to a social network, it is being viewed by people who

are hungry to learn new information. What happens next is a benevolent circle of referral traffic. As the user

shares their activity or content from your site to friends on a social network, the post from the initial engaged

user drives traffic back to your site, some of whom will login and publish comments of their site activities back

to their networks, and so on and so on.

Many organizations that have implemented

this functionality are seeing a range between

6 to 25 new referral visitors for each social

action a user shares with friends on the social

networks. As this cycle repeats (see Figure 2)

these organizations create a direct link to the

social networks and a sustaining stream of new

referred visitors.

Tapping into an engaged user’s social network is

an approach that has relevance for any type of organization. One of the challenges of crafting an effective

social media program is how to make best use of the new tools. One popular tactic and a great first step is to

create a Facebook fan page. This is an effective method for organizations to reach their target market directly

on the social networks and directly push content and information. An organization can complement this

approach by leveraging tools that tap into word of mouth marketing and utilize a pull strategy to drive users to

their website.

A Facebook fan page can be an influential communication platform to promote your message, but to reach

individuals not already familiar with your brand or following you on Facebook, you still need to invest in

outbound marketing activities to drive traffic to the fan page. Consider the more powerful scenario of a user

influencing other users, and driving traffic back to the website at a point of activity.

Connecting your website to the social platforms through the engaged user and empowering that user to

be your advocate, any organization can tap into the social networks to reach new audiences. Content sites

can enable users to interact and share their thoughts with their social network. Community sites can allow

members to share their blogs, surveys, videos, downloads, or other site activities with friends on the social

JANRAIN MARKETING BRIEF | www.janrain.com | 888.563.3082 PG3Copyright © 2010 Janrain Inc. All rights reserved.

Referrals

Posts

Figure 2: Data showing the relationship between number of posts to the social networks and referral traffic generated.

user management platform for the social web MARKETING BRIEF

networks. Commerce sites can make it easy for customers to share their purchases or product

recommendations with friends on the social networks. These are all examples of how any organization can

implement a strategy that leverages engaged users on its website as a bridge to the social networks.

You can expand your organization’s digital

footprint and tap into a wider set of social graphs

by supporting multiple social platforms. While

Facebook boasts a vast member base and robust

social sharing features, data shows that not all

internet users are on Facebook, and many prefer

other social networks as a means of connecting

and sharing information with friends. The ensuing

sample of major U.S. media and entertainment

organizations all enable social publishing and sharing

of user-generated content from their websites to multiple social networks.

The bar chart in Figure 3 illustrates that user preference for content and activity sharing vary by destination.

Your organization can engage the largest audience by casting a wide net and empowering your users to

become brand advocates for you across multiple social networks.

JANRAIN MARKETING BRIEF | www.janrain.com | 888.563.3082 PG4Copyright © 2010 Janrain Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 3: Data showing that users publish to multiple social networks

Conclusion

As the web continues to evolve, success will come to organizations that take advantage of new tools to reach

target audiences and create meaningful interactions. Social media has democratized communication and

made information sharing easier. Augmenting push marketing strategies with tools to empower your engaged

users as a bridge between your website and the social networks will yield the most powerful results and true

word of mouth marketing success on the social web.

About Janrain

Janrain helps organizations succeed on the social web with its user management platform. A key component of the platform is Janrain

Engage, an enterprise-class, software as a service (SaaS) solution to enable a website to expedite the registration and login processes

with a user’s third party account, import user profile information and address books, and make it easy for a user to publish website

activity back to multiple social networks. Companies enjoy higher registration rates, increased brand awareness and qualified referral

traffic. The end-user benefits from a faster login and a more customized online experience. Janrain Engage is the only solution to

support 16 identity providers and social networks including, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo! Janrain customers include industry

leaders such as Universal Music Group, Kodak, Fox News, National Geographic Channel, and PayPal. Founded in 2005, Janrain is based in

Portland, Oregon. For more information, please call 1-888-563-3082, or visit www.janrain.com.