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c h a p t e r10: SOCIAL OBJECTS■people to the content, after which specific items are discovered. For example, I may see
a spot on TV that advertises the continuation of the story unfolding in the spot, and
find at that site lots of interesting discussion around that spot and the associated prod-
uct or service. More likely, however, people will find that community by searching for
the content itself and discovering the community, working backward to the online ver-
sion of the original TV spot, posted on YouTube.
It’s really important to catch the significance of this. A common approach to
promotion typically uses an ad of some type to drive people to a microsite or social
presence point where the audience in turn discovers the content that ultimately encour-
ages individuals to join, visit, or otherwise participate. This is not how the increas-
ing use of search engines—everyplace, and increasingly on mobile devices—works.
Instead, people search for specific things—often at a very granular level in searches for
things like “wakeboard” rather than “action sports watercraft.” With the emergence
of ubiquitous search boxes, it is imperative that each single piece of content—each
social object in the very narrow sense of the term—be optimized. By optimizing the
individual social objects, you greatly increase the likelihood that the larger commu-
nity will be discovered, since that community is the container for those objects. In the
“Hands-On” section for this chapter, there is a specific exercise that shows you how
important this is.
This all gets to the larger point of optimizing social media and social objects
in particular. In a world with less interruption, in a medium that is literally driven by
search and powered by direct personal interest along with sharing and recommenda-
tions, it is the details (the small items and pieces of content) that are the most desired
and hence are the things most likely to searched for and the most likely to be appreci-
ated, shared, and talked about upon discovery. Tags, titles, categories, and other forms
of applicable metadata (for example, the description of your company video posted on
YouTube) that apply to the content—to the social object—and not just the web page
must be keyword rich, and must perform as well as “search attractors” as they do as
“attention holders.” Be aware here: It’s quite common to focus (appropriately) on the
content—good content matters, after all—and to completely ignore the tags, titles, and
other meta information at the object level and instead focus SEO efforts at the website
or page level only. Don’t make this mistake: Work with your SEO team to optimize
everything.Review and Hands-On
Chapter 10 explored the social object in detail. While social objects are in general
anything around which a conversation may form (a photo, a short post, or a lifestyle),
Chapter 10 focused most on the larger social objects (lifestyles, passions, and causes)
and the ways in which these larger objects can be used to encourage conversations
around your business or organization.