She might not always agree.

Download the Timeline template to make your own cover image and have some fun.

Credits to Lindsey on this one.

Social Design is a product strategy model that places users at the core of an experience. It allows products and brands to scale by incorporating a user’s trusted communities, driving conversation and creates a strong sense of identity through the experience. This is a model that Facebook has popularized in the development of their own platform by thinking from the inside out.

So, how do we leverage similar modeling and incorporate it for brand marketing initiatives? In this post we are going to explore the strategic approach and thinking which takes place to make proper Social Design decisions for a social branded experience.

Marketers now have a tremendous and evolving opportunity to leverage communities such as Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms from the outside in. By developing experiences with this strategy users are still at the epicenter, however, marketers can now tap into the existing community users have already built to provide experiences on these platforms which nurtures the users identities even further through a social experience. When executed appropriately, this approach provides a valuable experience to the user, brands they engage with and the related social platforms.

Have you used Spotify, Nike+, Flipboard or TripAdvisor? If so, you have engaged with a product leveraging this model. Here’s a quick reason why:

Spotify is connecting friends around music. But why is it so successful? One of the key tenets to their product model is allowing users to feel more open to share and provide the tools to do so by connecting the experience directly to a user’s Facebook network. Immediately upon registration, as a user, you are surrounded by your friends and can engage immediately around your common musical interests. This all happens instantly based on the user’s existing social identity. Connections with the Facebook real-time ticker affords the application the opportunity to share users’ musical interests in a frictionless manner and further curate their identity and connections.

Nike+ has likely popped up in your news feed as you see a friend complete a staggering 7-mile run before (some of us) have even had our first coffee. In Nike’s product strategy there is a focus on providing users the opportunity to easily tell their story, aggregate and share experiences over time. Through charting, mapping and connecting users around their shared interest of exercise, it allows the user to continue to build their identity, share, and engage around a common activity.

At Stuzo | Dachis Group, when we engage on branded social experiences, we identify which projects will benefit from this outside in approach. Be sure to check out our post on Program Identify Design for more behind the scenes information on how we make some of these key decisions along the way.

Let’s take a look at a recent launch for the upcoming People’s Choice Awards where we can see in action the Program Identity Design framework. This will provide a tangible demonstration on how we executed on a Social Design plan. For this program, we engaged early on during the show’s planning to concept, design, develop and manage the social experience.

The Program Identity Design process began on day one during the discovery phase of this program. The ultimate goal was to provide an authentic user experience which would generate conversation, brand amplification and personalized engagements by incorporating key elements of social platforms. This frame and the strategic thinking helped us ensure we were meeting business metrics, one of them being driving total votes and engagements via social.

What took place during this phase included multiple sessions reviewing the Program Identity Design framework with our team, client and related stakeholders to ensure we executed an approach, which was social at the core. At the same time, it included detailed data and market analysis to make the critical decisions which would enable the program to succeed. This was done first and foremost, before proceeding on our deep dive into information architecture with our creative team. We often do this, because we understand a social approach requires a set framework, clear objectives and requirements collaboratively developed before we begin churning out creatives. You should be able to tell the story of this experience with your colleagues and client using this lens before opening Visio, PhotoShop or touching a line of code.

Let’s take a dive into some of these notable Social Design elements which were incorporated as part of the end product through this process…

Personalization that provides value – If users are going to authorize an application or take the time to connect the experience with their account on a social platform, give them a clear reason to. Ask yourself “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” If you know the movie I am referencing, it’s also a key question you can take into many aspects of your decision making criteria.

Personalization elements include:

• Facebook Interest Mapping: By connecting their account via Facebook, the application queries related content the user has associated with their identity on Facebook. This includes graph items such as celebrities, movies, music and related interests. Through the personalization lens into the experience, users are immediately able associate themselves with the brand and seamlessly cast votes for their favorites. We instantly help make the program identifiable to the user based on the social account they have already curated over time.

• Connected Relevance: Through their interactions users can see related interests and their friends’ activity in the experience. This provides the user an associated connection with the nominees and provides a transparent view into how this nominee may be connected through their network. It also provides validation and connection to the program by surfacing relevant friend activity. At times, this may give them the edge to place a vote for a particular nominee, perceive value, engage deeper or use the available social tools to introduce their friends to the experience.

Distribution and Conversation – Facebook is a key piece of the outside in approach in this example. Scale is further enabled by successfully connecting the experience across the web. Implementing the appropriate user options and connection points provides the link to transcend multiple communities, build conversation and drive engagement.

• Facebook Graph: The majority of users engaging on Facebook are able to see the deep connectedness they have with the nominees and the brand. Multiple streams of distribution are included through the Facebook platform to allow users to tell their story and drive activation from their network. This is performed through generating conversation around similar interests and sharing stories to the users and relevant friends’ walls. Private invitations are also an available sharing option.

• Increasing Stream Engagement (In-Stream App): We know from our identity mapping and related research during the discover phase, that many of the core users who personalize are vocal and open to sharing their brand experience. We wanted to give them the opportunity to broadcast their support even further. An in-stream application is included as part of the experience to allow brand page owners and Facebook users to syndicate the main voting experience for engagement directly in the stream.

• Twitter Voting and Conversation Drivers: Users are provided the option to tweet or retweet a vote on the Twitter platform to show their support for their favorite nominee. Directly in the Facebook experience they can also “Like” and “Follow” a nominee to connect with the artist.  This extension also provides a valuable opportunity to leverage the star power of nominees and branded hashtags as they drive interactions from their own networks to support their nomination.

• Branded Extensions: People’s Choice Awards is a Procter & Gamble Production. Through a partnership with their portfolio of brands, the experience was customized and deployed for partnered brands on their Facebook pages. This provided all the same opportunities of the flagship experience with a branded tie-in to drive further engagement and conversation with their specific audience. Measurement and analytics were provided in a dashboard segmented by brands.

This article is a snapshot of some of the defining elements incorporated into the experience through Program Identity Design. To drive recurring engagement and tap into the users desire to be a part of the show, a few other notable additions were presented during the experience.

• Each vote by a user connected via Facebook and opted into the promotion contributes an additional entry to a sweepstakes, which includes tickets to the show. This is also connected to a Facebook Event which provides additional entries to win. This creates a compelling reason for sustained engagement and brand distribution.
• A user “Fan Awards” (UGC) contest is included to allow users to submit themselves or a friend who should be nominated for a special award called “Favorite Profile Pic.” Users can share their entry, post as their profile picture and drum up votes within the PCA experience to win special red carpet treatment at the show.
• Subsequent releases to the application (not shown in this post) are included to sustain engagement around the Award Show season and to drive viewership.
• Contextual prompts were shown to the user to allow them to opt-in to be a part of the on air broadcast. Secrecy is being kept with this feature, so tune in on January 11th!

To engage consumers effectively within social platforms, it requires a shift in the way we have traditionally thought about marketing and communications. A handy resource along the way of thinking outside in (and inside out) is the Facebook Developer video series which provides a library of videos and presentations on Facebook Platform engagement (drill down to the video on Social Design: A Definition). To learn more about Program Identity Design, check out the Stuzo | Dachis Group Program Identity Design Framework and feel free to contact me on Twitter @mark_spangler.

The evening’s panel was called “Making Social Tangible,” with the goal to provide the audience and organization members with key tangible guidance, demonstrations of work, and feedback on how they can take action on scaling social at their organization.

The panelists brought their A-game as we made a key piece of the evening case studies and demonstrations of work relevant to audience questions. Day to day I often work in the Fortune 500 space, where we are working on strategies and engagement models to scale social at the enterprise level. Evenings like this always provide great value to me personally, as a diverse audience of 200 people, enable us to discuss first hand the challenges and opportunities for businesses at multiple stages in their social business efforts. Representatives from Fortune 500, Pharma, Financial Services, all the way to marketers focusing on small retail business – enabled us to quickly realize the state we are at in social today. There are early market movers and adopters who are working on integrating social fully into the marketing mix, and still some businesses trying to figure out social. Due to the gap in integration of social across such a large audience, there could have been 15 follow up panels, discussing the different lenses and approaches required due to the diverse business sets. A key takeaway when you have such a broad spectrum of social business participants, is that there is not a one model fits all solution for social media integration.

If you are local or near the Philadelphia region, be sure to check out the PhIMA website for other upcoming panels.

For those who could not make it, here is a listing of the Panelists:

A Facebook Page gives a voice to any public figure or organization to join the conversation with Facebook users, according to Facebook. With nearly a billion Facebook users, maintaining an effective Facebook Page is a critical consideration for all businesses and agencies.

This Clickable white paper examines winning strategies to make Facebook Pages work for business. It includes expert interviews and profiles of leading Pages management vendors. Key focus areas include:

• The Role of a Facebook Page in the Digital Marketing Ecosystem.
• How to develop a complete approach to Facebook Pages, from privacy and permissioning to content calendars and response strategies.
• Budgeting and allocating resources for Facebook Pages.
• Measuring the success of your Facebook Page.
• Partnering with a third-party vendor to develop custom Facebook Pages, Tabs and Apps.

Credits to Max and team from Clickable on putting together an insightful report. You can download the report by clicking the image below or directly on their site.

Download your own waldo.

This post originally appeared on the Stuzo | Dachis Group site.

A well planned meeting at the onset of any project with an energized and inspiring project leader establishes confidence in your company’s ability to deliver. It also inspires the surrounding stakeholders as they engage in the project going forward. What starts as an initial perception and team confidence booster, drives through into the rest of the life-cycle of the project.

I wanted to start this post with those thoughts as they directly relate to the mindset you need to deliver an engaging client kickoff meeting. To put some context around the client kickoff meeting in regards to a digital project, this is most often the stage after a statement of work has been executed, project scope is finalized (depending on the project and type of company), team leaders have been designated, internal briefings and initial project plannings have been made at the organizational level.

This is sometimes the first impression and integration of the cross-company stakeholders as they proceed into the digital project (i.e. Brand -> Agency or Agency -> Vendor). This is your Project Team’s (led by the Project Manager) opportunity to present your project plan to the stakeholders outside of your organization. Client-facing, this usually marks the transition where day-to-day project items going forward transition from your company’s account manager or business development team member into the Project Manager’s hands. You have this opportunity to continue the process of building comradrie with your partner, set and manage expectations, risks, mutual responsibilities and follow ups that will lead to a successful project delivery. Use this time to show your clients how proper planning and internal preparation, along with your leadership abilities, allow everyone to leave this meeting empowered and with a clear vision to move forward together.

Depending on the type of project, there are different levels of scope or services that may be provided. For example, an iterative software development project may not have the project plan fully defined at the kickoff, whereas a planned social application for a particular campaign may have detailed scopes, wireframes, and a project plan readily available in a quicker turnaround time. That being said, there are multiple routes a kickoff meeting could go based on the stage of the scope, detailed project plan and production approach. However, there are many best practices you should pay attention to regardless of the type of project.

1. Prepare internally at your organization before meeting with the client.

This sounds like an obvious head-nodder and something that is always assumed. However, I point this out as tip #1 as the beginning of any successful requirement requires team buy-in (and time), corporate alignment, and dedication to deliver the end product. The client kickoff call is one of the first times this uniform front will be able to be presented . That being said, note that proper preparation and documentation for this meeting takes time, and while agency project initiation may be quick moving, do not rush to the client kickoff without following the internal alignment steps you set at your organization. This may include first an internal project briefing – where the final statement of work, project goals, account background, etc is presented to the entire project team, discussed, prioritized, and sets the wheels in motion for internal responsibilities and project planning. Do not let the client kickoff occur without aligning internally as a team. Sometimes business development, account, and project team members have very hectic daily duties, however, never let this be an excuse for the team members to skip internal project transition steps. It will show to the clients if you do.

2. Have a documented agenda and be prepared to lead.

Client’s join this call because they very much have an interest in the project (obviously). Without an agenda and project manager prepared to navigate the meeting, there will be good periods of crickets and a meeting which leads to uncertainty on the client-side. I advise building a templated meeting agenda based on the types of projects your company takes on. With this approach, through your internal project initiation phases, you can leverage the team’s collective knowledge and have a defined process to prepare the required items needed to lead an effective client kickoff meeting. This should be led by the project manager, however, still requires dedicated team support in the early stages as the project is in transition. Items on the agenda should include: welcome and introductions, project definition and assignment review, scope review, timeline and responsibility confirmation, assumptions and unknowns, answering open items and setting clear next steps.

3. Develop a preliminary project plan with internal stakeholder support.

Most of the information you address in a client kickoff meeting should be part of the project plan documentation. The project plan will go through iterations as the project proceeds, but it’s critical (once again, you can use the templated approach), that core information is available prior to the client call for a clear direction and proper distribution of information to the teams. By taking the time to collect and organize the information at this stage, you will be in a better position to deliver to your client in the meeting (and it will also help you uncover questions for follow ups). At this stage, a few common items you should have available in the preliminary project plan are: timelines, responsibilities, project scope, objectives, role definition, assumptions, risks, initial timeline.

4. Present and manage scope, expectations, responsibilities, and timelines. Identify risks appropriately.

Make sure, as part of the client kickoff, you are reviewing the detailed project scope and project plans (if ready to be presented on this kickoff call; however, many times may be a follow up with the appropriate team members) along with defined goals and objectives. On this call the client may have their internal PM, account manager, IT strategists, and other sponsors joining – and for some of them – this may be the first time they are seeing the full project scope. Keep in mind that up until this stage, you have controlled ensuring your team is internally prepared, however the entire client team may not have been fully briefed yet and you must be sure to do so in the meeting. Going through the scope and getting another round of confirmation and buy-in will also help avoid scope creep and client-side confusion as the project progresses. Also, as you get through the scope, make sure you are identifying mutual responsibilities and follow ups which may be required as part of the plan to execute the project. Execution is a team effort, and by identifying upcoming responsibilities and timelines – you can help all parties hit the ground running.

As noted above, there are many variations of projects, however this section assumes at this stage an initial work-back schedule and high-level responsibilities are listed to hit the project launch date. This may not yet include your internal team’s full responsibilities, but those items which are key mutual items across the companies to hit the launch date (i.e. creative asset delivery, consolidated feedback of review cycles, copydeck revision rounds and dates, etc). As you go through the timeline make sure you identify the owner at each organization who is most likely on the call, get their confirmation, questions for follow up and clarity on the item, before moving on to the next timeline element. A missed timeline can ultimately lead to a delayed project and cost schedule change, so identifying and confirming agreement at this stage, is a key step for multiple reasons. Lastly, be sure to address risk appropriately. This can be a sensitive situation, however, open project risks and the plans to address them should be brought the the appropriate stakeholders as soon as possible at this stage. Sometimes it may be with a select team, depending on who is attending the kick-off call.

5. Close the meeting with clarity, communication procedures and address any questions.

Make sure you leave the client call with everyone on the same page for moving forward. This may include answering any open questions or making a note to follow up on open questions which can not be answered in this call. This call serves as your chance to avoid confusion down the line and you want to make sure your goals have been achieved and no one leaves feeling their questions have not been addressed or marked for follow up. Be sure to close-out with a review of these follow up items, identification of point-people, and set a clear expectation for the communication plan going forward. As mentioned above, there may be client-side team members on this briefing who will not be involved in every action going forward and everyone appreciates clarity on the future communication plans for their own scheduling purposes. After the call, be sure to follow up via email to the team with meeting notes. I can’t stress enough the value you will realize from having a documented trail of information you can share with the appropriate team members.

These 5 tips are just a few of the approaches and planning items you should consider during the client kickoff stage. Handling this transition takes preparation and teamwork – so make sure, through proper internal alignment, you are equipped to own this type of meeting. Rest assured that no matter where you work, both teams briefly chat after a kickoff meeting internally about “how the meeting went,” and through proper planning and approach – you can take the steps to be respected by all stakeholders on the project for your planning, leadership, and execution.

Google+ is in it’s early adopter phase and crushing it with registrations even during its invitation-only beta. As of July 14th, Larry Page reported over 10M registered users. Due to the crowd I run with, about 60%  of my Circles posts are related to some form of data, education or news about the Google+ service. With all the information “circling” around (get it?), I wanted to share a hit list of some great reads just a few weeks into the service from my network. From my view so far, many signs point that there is strong utilitarian use of this service for businesses, and the possibility that this service can easily scale to be a leading productivity enhancement and collaboration tool. Google has an advantage to pick up mass adoption through the integration with Google Services, and this is something Facebook or Twitter, do not bring to the table.

This week’s Google+ reading list:

- Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ Project

- Vincent Wong: What G+ Is Really About

- Larry Page: Quarterly Earnings Call Notes

- Jed Singer: Google+ and the Enterprise

- Ross Mayfield: Circles in Google

- Dave Gray: Sharing Universe

- PCWorld: 9 Reasons to Switch from Facebook to Google+ (not endorsing the title yet

Hopefully you’ll find some of the links useful in getting a primer on the service not only from a user perspective, but also from a business integration perspective. Google+ recently closed their registration form for business participants, and I look forward to seeing the branded integration direction.

As you think of the future of Google+ and the possibilities, try this exercise:

1. Visit their products and services page.

2. Make a list of how many of these you currently use via Google or another service in your personal or work life. I’ll give you a hint: Email, Voice, Calendar, Document Management, Video, Photo, Mapping, Mobile, Search…

3. Imagine a world where these and all your other productivity (and personal / entertainment) needs are available in the cloud, and integrated with an easy to use social layer. Add on proper privacy and filtering for your personal and business usage networks for real-time collaboration, sharing, distribution and engagement.

4. Read the word’s of Larry page regarding Google’s plan… “[to] create services that people in the world use twice a day, just like a toothbrush.”

The service is still young, in beta stage, but opportunities are being shown each and everyday of usage. Feel free to tweet or share your recent findings, thoughts or readings and connect with me on Google+.