The FRESH Analysis – A Social Media Framework

So I have a theory. I’ll start off with a question for you – What are the success factors that go into a creation of a great social media website? One of the difficult questions facing social media today is how the hell do you measure it? Is it by your member count? Are the members doing what you want them to do on your site? What makes them come back, and how do you make sure they do, because a social site without a community and interactions, is, sort of not one at all, right?

I’ve been talking to friends and family, yes, they are my test subjects – what better way to get good feedback than to ask the participants themselves? From the answers I have gathered, I have devised a framework that I think might be useful for anyone who is thinking of starting a social site.

I call it the FRESHAnalysis. Yes – another acronym for the masses. Enjoy. FRESH stands for Friendliness, Relevance, Engagement, Simplicity, and Handiness. You see, with a framework like this, only then can you focus on creating metrics and analytics to measure their success. With me so far?

Let’s go into deeper detail:

Friendliness
Jakob Nielson comes to mind. He is like the father of website usability. When I first got into the web business, I knew about him. I read his articles on how bad Flash was, how you should have clear navigation, how users are trained to see the blue color as links etc etc. all good stuff. So what do I mean by friendliness? It’s exactly that – How friendly is your site to the masses? Is it easy to navigate? How do you structure your content? Social Media is all about interaction, so unlike the old style website, where you simply write boring statements describing your product, or service, you need to make sure your social media site “interacts” with the visitor. Don’t just make statements, ask questions. Flickr has the famous “Hello” in different languages; Twitter has “What are you doing?”; Facebook recently just got friendlier with “What’s on your mind?”. Making people feel comfortable on your site does go a long way in gaining popularity and return visits.

Relevance
This one’s a bit tricky. One would assume that when you build a social media site, you are targeting a global audience. If you do that, you might end up targeting no one. See how MySpace has evolved to target the teens and musicians, and Facebook is for the more mature crowd? Don’t forget that geography plays a big role in Relevance too. Something that is hot in the US doesn’t mean it will be hot everywhere else. Many of my friends don’t “get” Twitter because they are conservative, private individuals who don’t see the point in “tweeting” where you are, or what you are doing. Companies need to understand that cultural differences do exist, and develop strategies to provide relevant features for their targeted segment.

Engagement
How much time are people spending on your site? As a social media site, it makes sense to keep your visitor on your site for as long as possible, and making sure that person comes back as often as possible. In this day and age, there are many ways to be “on your site” – email alerts, subscriptions via RSS, games, photo uploads, video uploads just to name a few. With this goal in mind, it is your job as a marketer to decide what relevant features and activities to provide based on your target audience’s preferences and tastes. Remember the games you played on Facebook and the time you wasted? Facebook owns you.

Simplicity
You must have heard the phrase “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify”. Easier said than done, right? If you don’t understand what a site does, will you be open to what it has to offer? The answer is no. So in order to attract visitors to use your services, please simplify your messaging and make sure your site reflects that.

Handiness
In an online world of web widgets and open APIs, don’t just give your users one way to access your services, give them many options. Create a mobile version, leverage RSS, build widgets, leverage existing platforms like Facebook Connect, Yahoo! OpenID, get a Twitter feed – the key is to reach as many people as possible and make your service handy, accessible anywhere and anyway.

There you have it, the FRESH Analysis – The Framework for Evaluating Social Media Success. One of the limitations of this theory is it doesn’t take into consideration ROI and revenue generation capabilities. I believe that is another story for another time. As I develop this theory further I will propose measurements and metrics for this. In the meantime, here’s my challenge to you – How FRESH is your site?

Happy Interacting!

Greetings!

Hi, and welcome to Fresh Baked Web. My name is Bernie Chew, and I’ll be your host for the total time you spend on this site. This will be the site for both our portfolio and our blog.

But first, a little background on myself. I started my online media career way back in 1996, when I picked up my very first HTML programming book from a quaint little Japanese bookstore called Kinokuniya. I was hooked. So I started creating awebsites – very simple ones at the time – with static HTML and hosted on Yahoo!’s Geocities (remember that?). As I learned more about both the design and development aspects of the web, what fascinated me was how fast-paced this industry was. In the span of 10 years, the way we code for the web has evolved from static HTML, to dynamic pages with a back-end database, from creating pages using table tags, to separating your content from presentation, and the drive towards a semantic web. At the same time, the way people use online media has also changed tremendously – we now don’t just use the web to get content, we collaborate on this very space as well – the era of social networking.

I’ve spent the last 10 years in constant learning, being employed in web-related companies who focused on different areas of the process, including intranets, corporate websites, community, as well as e-commerce sites. They each have their own set of challenges and

What intrigued me the most was the development of websites that encourage social interaction and affect change. I love building the community portion of a website, and watching a site grow from 1 user to hundreds or even thousands is extremely rewarding.

But how does an individual or company who is not in touch with the rapid changes in web technology leverage these technologies for their own objectives? This is where Fresh Baked Web can help you.

We are a social media strategy company located in Sunny Singapore. Our objective is to provide you with the resources you need to solve your business issues and problems. We will do this through our blog, our web projects, and direct consultation. We hope that you will learn as much as possible from us and have as much fun doing so as we will have presenting them to you.