I've recently been talking to some of my friends & clients about the value of integration of social media efforts with online marketing efforts.

The big underlying question: How should my website integrate content from my social media properties?

HERE ARE A FEW OPTIONS

1. Bi-directional hub & spoke model

Benefits: 2 way syndication and a well thought tagging taxonomy allows much of your social media content to be syndicated in relevant places on your website (and vice-versa) without much work.

Draw Backs: Some content, out of context, can be misinterpreted; especially network specific memes. Syndication can add a barrier to sharability & the organic viral nature of certain social media channels.

2. Multidirectional hub & spoke model

Benefits: All the benefits of #1 plus allows conversations to exist across social media properties regardless of which property a given user belongs to. (Note: certain channels like Twitter & Facebook are easier to integrate in this way than others.)

Draw Backs: A unified tracking system that ties conversations back to specific users is much harder to set up. (Also all the drawbacks of #1)

3. Clustered honeycomb model

Benefits: Allows for additional segmentation of content. This is a huge benefit in an age of information overload. Having multiple streams of content, dedicated to specific user-groups allows users to get the content they want, and avoid the content they don't. This type of segmentation will help identify potential brand advocates.

Draw Backs: More upfront content strategy planning will be required. A valuable amount of content will need to be created for each segment. Additional effort will be required by community managers to ensure easy cross-channel communications between segments.

4. Dandelion hub & spoke shared community model

Benefits: All the benefits of #2, but monopolizes on the power of cross-channel influencers to introduce content across multiple channels. This means influencers will help to ensure proper memes are maintained, & sharability is intact. Influencers will also lend an enhanced level of trust to content.

Draw Backs: This places significant power on influencers & could backfire if negative information is discovered. (example: Nissan Cube) Requires a more advanced monitoring system to ensure message integrity is intact.

5. Selective multichannel conversation monitoring/publishing model

Benefits: All the benefits of #4 but doesn't rely on influencers to introduce content. This method would still rely on cross channel influencers to spread content within a specific channel, but would use a re-publishing meme to spread the content across other channels.

Draw Backs: An enhanced monitoring & workflow management tool is required (M). Additional effort from community managers will be required. If influencers aren't able to add additional value to produced content, re-publication will not be possible; additional effort will be required during content strategy planning.

I was able to use each of these models in different ways to help different companies who were struggling with the big question (How should my website integrate content from my social media properties?).

You should consider company/ brand structure, time/ budget investment, social media strategy, content strategy, and available tools. If you have any questions on which model would work best for your company/ brand - don't hesitate to ask. If you can think of additional integration models, I encourage you to post a response.

Follow me here - @thejordanrules

For vector (AI) file with these models for editing, you can download it as a zip file here: download