What is Social Design
Facebook and Google are on a mission to put social design at the core of their
businesses, but how does this translate to your business and how do
you create social experiences on your website?
Facebook think that how we understand each other can be broken
down to three core elements: Identity,
Conversation and Community.
- Identity refers to our own sense
of self and how we are seen by our communities.
- Conversation refers to the various
interactions we have with our communities.
- Community refers to the people we know
and trust and who help us make decisions.
These three core elements get us thinking about how to reinvent
business around the 'social graph'. Users may want to share
experiences with their friends or 'Like' a product or service. It
is these actions that hold sway within social networks as we move
away from the 'what' to the 'who'!
Now is the time to re-think how your business on the internet
can be designed by putting people at the centre, and it isn't just
about linking to social media but also about personalising your
website, encouraging community and defining new conversations.
As our web design business grows in Oxford every engagement with
a new prospective company has a question about their Facebook or
Twitter strategy. We believe that now it is not enough to just
incorporate 'Follow' icons on your home page.
Social Media is an extension of your 'social graph' the
one that helps you make a decision about where to send your kids to
school or what solicitor you use. Only now community also occurs
online, it becomes a utility as we attach identity to our online
social graph. As we start to 'Like' or 'Google +' films, music,
businesses or products.
So what to do?
- Personalise the user experience and encourage
trust
- Develop tools to encourage sharing or
incorporate existing sharing functionality from integrated social
media
- Encourage identity - how users are seen by the
communities
So while social media is 'on a mission to enable lots of
companies and lots of industries to re-invent their product and
their business through the lens of people and friends' Dan
Rose, Vp Partnerships and Platform Marketing, Facebook, our
mission at Grow is to advise local
businesses on how to implement social design. Watch this
space.
