Complete Guide To Social Infrastructure

Gigya, Inc.
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Kevin White
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The Complete Guide to
Social Infrastructure
Learn how to socialize your website or mobile application to create
immersive user experiences and discover actionable customer insights

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE
2012 GIGYA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. | www.gigya.com | CONTACT: 650.353.7230 or info@gigya.com Page | 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
02 Defining Social Infrastructure
PART ONE | Identity
04 Social Login: Increase Registrations and Get Better User Data
10 Social Data: Managing User Information
PART TWO | Engagement
14 Sharing: Tools for Driving Awareness
19 Conversation: Encouraging User Generated Content
23 Discovery: Surfacing User Activity
24 Gamification: Incentivizing Valuable User Actions
PART THREE | Optimization
31 How to Track and Measure Success
33 Turning Social Data into Insights
CONCLUSION
36 Finding a Social Infrastructure Solution

Theres a new way to run your business on the web. It requires a different kind of thinking that puts social
experiences at the core. It will make your web properties more interactive, engaging, and compelling. Its better
for your customers, which means its better for your bottom line. Its called Social Infrastructure.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have taken the defining elements of social networks - identity,
social graph, communication - and made them available for websites and mobile applications to integrate into the
user experience. As a result, innovative brands now have a way to create immersive social experiences across
their various digital channels. These businesses are discovering that, when users can leverage their online
identity, share interesting content, and interact with friends, they are likely to stick around longer, invite others to
join them, and ultimately drive revenue to your business.
This guide is designed to give you a deep
understanding of what Social Infrastructure is, and
what it can do for your business. In it, you will find
detailed information about the components that
make up Social Infrastructure, as well as best
practices for integrating those components into your
web properties. By reading this guide, you should
expect to have a clear understanding of why Social
Infrastructure is critical for your business, as well as
a clear idea of how to get started.
What is Social Infrastructure?
Social Infrastructure can be defined as: social functionality integrated into the core of a website or mobile
application that creates immersive user experiences and provides deep customer insights. However, this
definition does not paint the complete picture. Social Infrastructure is much more than haphazardly placing social
buttons to your website so that users can check out your Facebook page or Twitter profile. Its about leveraging
available technologies to reconfigure your website or mobile app to be more social, and providing users with a
personalized web experience that they have come to expect. In turn, you will be able to discover insights about
your users that youve never been able to before such as what they are interested in, where they live, and who
their friends are. From there, you can begin to apply acquired information to personalize the user experience,
build lasting relationships with your customers, and drive unprecedented value to your business.

Do You Need Social Infrastructure?
Are you looking to gain deep insights about your users? Would you like to be able to identify your most influential
customers and the people who love your brand? Do you want to increase brand awareness and referral traffic?
Would you like to increase new user acquisitions? Are there key behaviors on your website that you would like to
monitor or incentivize? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then its time to seriously consider Social
Infrastructure.
The Web Has Fundamentally Changed
Its safe to say that, when it comes to user experience, the web has fundamentally changed. Users now expect
empowering web environments that offer the ability share stories with friends, engage in real-time conversations,
and provide brands with immediate feedback on products and content. If you dont recognize this shift in
behavior, this guide is your wakeup call. Its time to start leveraging Social Infrastructure to provide better user
experiences and begin building long-lasting relationships with your customers.
How can you squander even one more day
not taking advantage of the greatest shifts
of our generation? How dare you settle for
less when the world has made it so easy
for you to be remarkable?
Seth Godin,
Author of
Permission Marketing

Because traditional methods of acquiring user data do not lend enough information to create a truly personalized
web experience, many businesses are turning to social infrastructure to acquire new users and rich sets of user
data. This is because Social Infrastructure provides businesses with the ability to gain permission-based access to
a users social profile data through a process called social login.
Social login derived from a simple concept: filling out registration forms, creating new accounts, and remembering
new usernames and passwords is a huge pain point for users. Basic profile information (and much more) is
already maintained and kept up-to-date by users on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and
LinkedIn. So why not use that data to let users skip the registration process, and simply authenticate user
identities by leveraging existing social data? This is exactly what social login does.

How Social Login Works
Social login allows users to register or sign into a website using a preferred social account. It works by taking user
information that is maintained on social networks, and using it to quickly register new users and sign existing
users in. To start the process, a user can simply select a preferred social network by clicking a corresponding icon
on your registration or sign-in page. From there, the user can grant permission for the social network to pass their
profile information to your website by clicking the allow or login button from within the social network
authentication window. Once clicked, the social network passes permitted data to your website to complete the
registration or sign-in process.

To help you visualize how it works, weve provided an example of the social login flow on Forbes.com below:

Social Authentication the Key to Permission-Based Data
Youve probably seen a permission request similar to the one pictured below. This authorization screen shows
how social networks (in this case Facebook) can identify a user, and relay profile information back to your website
or application. By clicking the allow or log in button, the user explicitly authorizes your site to access his or her
social profile data in a permission-based way.

1. User clicks to register
using a Social Identity 2. Social authentication window appears,
and user clicks Log in with Facebook.
3. User is seamlessly logged-in

Adding Value through Social Login
Its important to note that social authentication is completely permission-based, meaning that users are fully
aware of (and opt into) the data exchange between your website and their preferred social network. However,
while many users appreciate the transparency that social login offers, they usually expect something of value in
return. Fortunately, its pretty easy to offer a better user experience via social login. A few simple examples
include providing a faster way to register, personalizing content according to user interests, and unlocking access
to premium content.
Why Social Login is Better for Users
Many users prefer social login over traditional registration and login
because with social login, they dont have to create and remember an
additional username and password in order to authenticate their
identity. Instead, they can login with the same credentials they use
for their favorite social network, and bypass yet another tedious
registration process. Additionally, if users already have an existing
account on your website, they can link that account to their social
identity, and quickly login with one click moving forward.
How Social Login Benefits Your Business
Social login is a core component of Social Infrastructure because it acts as a gateway to unlocking user data.
When someone logs in with a social network, you get permission-based access to rich, first-party data like email
address, location, interests, education, work history, connected friends, and hundreds of additional attributes.
This data presents an unprecedented amount of value to your business. With it, you can create incredibly
immersive and personalized user experiences, and make informed decisions learned from increased user
insights. A few examples of how social profile data can be applied to enhance business performance include:
Delivering hyper-relevant content based on user interests and demographics
Highlighting activity and recommendations from connected friends
Creating highly targeted email campaigns
Defining segments of high-intent and influential users
Validation - An additional pain point that social login solves is validating user emails. During the authentication
process, most social networks pass over a pre-validated email address. As a result, you can bypass unnecessary
user validation processes such as sending email confirmations and designing forgotten password workflows.

Social Login Best Practices
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
When thinking about where to place the social login option on your website, many of the same rules for
traditional registration can be applied. Listed below are some simple guidelines to follow:
Give social login options prominent placement on
your website. This may seem like an obvious best
practice, but its important to remember that if
users are not aware of the option to use social
login, they certainly will not.
On your registration and sign-in screens, place social
login icons to the left or directly above your
traditional website registration form.
Provide a way for users to login with a social identity
on every page. For best results, place the social login
option in the same area as your navigation.
Most users are trained to look at the top right section of a page to register or sign-in. Naturally, this is an
ideal location to display your social login buttons.
By following these best practices for social login placement, weve found that most brands are able to increase
logins and new registrations by 20-70%.
1

GIVE USERS A CHOICE
To maximize the amount of user registrations and
sign-ins, its important to support login options from
a variety of social networks. In fact, we conducted a
study that shows, while a majority of users (61%)
choose Facebook for social login, nearly 39% prefer
alternative social networks such as Twitter, Google,
and Yahoo.

1
PCWorld Case Study - http://www.gigya.com/case-studies/pcworld/

When implementing social login on your website, start by offering at least three social network options. Facebook,
Google, and Yahoo are ideal identity providers to start with because they are the most popular, and provide key
data points for registration like name, email, and age.
HAVE A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION AND A REASON TO REGISTER OR LOGIN
To maximize social login adoption and increase conversion rates, its important to have a clear call to action that
lets users know why its beneficial to use social login. Whether unlocking a feature, or simply providing a faster
way to register or sign-in, communicating a valid reason to login using a social account will have a positive impact
on your conversion rates. Websites with a clear call to action incorporate messaging like Quickly login with a
social account, or Connect with your social network to leave a comment. In the example below, CNET does a
great job of communicating the benefits of signing-up with social login:

LINK USER ACCOUNTS
Most websites that implement social login already have an existing user base and traditional registration system
in place. Many existing users will prefer to log-in with a social account once the option becomes available. Provide
these users with an optimal site experience by giving them the option to link their social account with their
existing site account. By following this best practice, existing account information, preferences, and history will all
be tied to a single user record. Linking user accounts also maintains database hygiene, and helps to reduce
duplicate user records. After linking accounts, returning members will be able to login with a single click, and with
all of their information consolidated in one place.
Social Login Benefits Explained

In addition to linking traditional site accounts, some users may want to connect with multiple social accounts. For
these users, the same rule for linking site accounts applies: link multiple social accounts to a single user record.
Sticking to this best practice will make it easier for users to share your content to multiple social networks while
providing you with additional insights about your users.

DISPLAY VISUAL CUES AFTER AUTHENTICATION IS COMPLETE
Make sure your users are aware that they have registered or logged-in successfully by providing visual cues after
authentication. A few examples of effective visual cues include:
Greeting users by name
Displaying a social profile picture after
authentication
Displaying a welcome message
Changing the appearance of social login buttons
after authentication is complete

In this section, we will provide you with a better understanding of the different types of social data available, and
the advantages that social data has over traditional user data. To start, its best to conceptualize social data into the
following five categories: 1) basic profile data, 2) extended profile data, 3) behavioral data, 4) social graph, and 5)
interest graph.
1. Basic Profile Data is information about a user that is typically required for traditional site registration. It
includes rudimentary fields like name, email, birth date, and gender.
2. Extended Profile Data is information stored on social networks that goes above and beyond basic
profile information. This includes a huge range of data with rich attributes such as work history,
education, location, and relationship status. Each social network offers different variations of extended
profile information. For example, extended profile data on Facebook includes attributes like birthday,
political views, and relationship status - whereas, on LinkedIn, extended information falls more along
the lines of work history, skills, and education.

3. Behavioral Data consists of information acquired from a users site activity. Most actions taken on a
website can be tracked and recorded as behavioral data. Commonly tracked activities include shared
content, comments posted, page visits, video views, and links clicked.
4. Social Graph refers to the connections between individuals on social networks. An example of social
graph information passed during authentication includes the number of friends a user has, names of
friends, and (in some cases) profile photos of those friends.
5. Interest Graph refers to the various interests that form a users identity. The interest graph includes
items that a user has explicitly expressed interest in through social networks or while browsing the web.
Common interest graph attributes include movies, music, books, shows, teams, brands, games, hobbies,
celebrities, and influencers.

The Impact of Social Data
In the past, businesses have relied on fragmented sources of data to learn more about users. From data collected
at registration to tracking conversion funnels through web analytics, marketers have been in a perpetual search
to find new insights about their audience. Social data gives marketers a huge leg up because it provides accurate
data about users that is abundant with actionable information. A few advantages of social data include:
Insights Social data is incredibly useful because it delivers insights that are far beyond what is offered
through traditional site authentication. This data can be used to design web experiences that are
personalized to user preferences, as well as target marketing efforts according to user demographics
and interests.
Freshness Social networks give users a reason to frequently update personal information such as
status, location, and employment history. By taking advantage of social login, you can automatically
sync recently modified fields to your database as returning users sign in with a social network.
Validation In order for a user to have a social account, he or she must have a validated email
address. When a new user registers via social login, that email address is passed to your website
through the authentication process. As a result, you can be assured that only valid email addresses are
stored in your database, and you will also be able to bypass the email confirmation process.
Handling Social Data
Social login offers much more than a faster means for registration and login. When users authenticate with a
social account, they knowingly give your site permission to access rich social information. With this robust set of
data, you have the opportunity to provide a personalized user experience, create highly effective marketing
campaigns, identify influential users, and discover the perfect target audience. However, all of these benefits are
contingent on the ability to effectively store and manage social data acquired through social login.
Although capturing basic profile information (name, email, age) is fairly straightforward, doing the same for the
additional types of social data presents businesses with two main challenges:
1. Social Data is Big Data
A ton of information about users is maintained through social networks, and a large amount of that
information is passed to your website or application during the authentication process. Such data
(activities, interests, work history, relationship status, etc.) does not fit well with existing, relational,
databases because relational databases are not equipped to handle large sets of data that are
constantly changing. Therefore, storing social data in a scalable way requires a new type of database
that is built to store and index vast amounts of data.

2. Social Data is Unstructured
Studies on big data show that 90% of existing user data is unstructured, and that social networks
account for a large portion of that information.
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The challenge with unstructured data is that it does not
have a pre-defined data model, and includes atypical data types such as interests, tweets, clicks, and
check-ins. So, in order to derive value from unstructured data, you need to find a database system that
is optimized to store and organize it.
Storing Social Data
In order to extract the full value from social data, businesses must find a way to normalize, store, index, and
manage it. However, modifying traditional databases to house social data is nearly impossible because social
data is continually growing and ever-changing. So, in order to take advantage of social data, businesses must
turn to newly available database technologies that make it easy to manage social data. To make this process
easier for you, weve outlined the essential features that every social database solution should provide.
Standardized Formatting Many social networks have different names for the same field. So, if one social
network uses zip, while another uses postal code, your database needs to be able to normalize that data into a
consistent format.
Unlimited Fields Make sure your database lets you capture an unlimited number of data fields. As new types
of social data become available, youll want to ensure that there are no limitations to the amount of information
your database can handle.
Centralized Data If your business has multiple points for
acquiring user data, be sure to have a central data storage location.
Centralizing your database will provide you with a comprehensive
view of users, and also helps to reduce IT investment.
Automatic Storage and Indexing Make sure
your database can automatically capture user
data after social authentication. As data is
passed from social networks to your website,
your database should be able to immediately
index that data to make it searchable within
your database.

2
http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/11/autonomy-big-data-infographic/

Accessibility Requiring marketers to request data from your IT department can be an arduous process that is
frustrating for you, and annoying for IT. To avoid this problem, choose a database technology that allows you to
easily build, access, and export targeted user segments.
Flexible Schema Choose a database that offers the ability to set a schema for structured fields, and apply a
schemaless architecture for unstructured fields. This ensures that all types of data will be captured into your
database, and (as social networks offer new data fields) you will be able to store that information without
additional configuration.
Registration System Consider a database solution that offers the ability to build an end-to-end registration
system with social login capabilities. Your developers are already busy with tasks that are more important than
building registration forms and workflows. By selecting a provider that offers a complete solution for building
registration and profile management workflows over the web, you can save time and scale with ease.
Data Sync As users return to your web properties, the ability to update any information that has been changed
on their social profile is critical to the hygiene of your database. Having a database that is capable of identifying
changes in profile information and updating user attributes accordingly ensures that your data is of top quality.
Insider Tip: Facebook takes updating user data a step further, allowing you to update recently modified profile fields
regardless of whether the user re-authenticates with your website or app. Make sure to take advantage of this feature by
selecting a database solution that supports automatic data syncing.
Compliance with Social Networks As social network policies change and become enforced by new legislation,
its important to consider a database solution that makes it easy to comply with evolving social network policies.
For instance, Facebook currently has data-handling policies in place that require businesses to provide an easy
way for users to download and delete their data. Facebook also requires that businesses delete stored social data
when a user revokes app permissions. In order to manage these policies at scale, its imperative to have a
database solution that automatically manages social policy requirements.


Today, users gravitate towards web environments that allow them to interact with their friends and like-minded
individuals. They expect the ability to seamlessly share experiences with people they know, join meaningful
conversations, and easily discover new and interesting content. By integrating social plugins and features into your
website or mobile app, you can provide users with an interactive and completely personalized experience. As you
do, you will find that users spend more time, view more pages, and bring more visitors to your site.
In this part of the guide, well take an in-depth look at a variety of social plugins that promote user engagement, and
provide some best practices for creating engaging web experiences across your digital channels.
A major component of user engagement is allowing users to share your content with the people they care about.
Providing intuitive ways for users to share to social networks not only makes for a better user experience, but also
helps drive qualified new visitors to your website. In fact, many leading brands are finding that more website
traffic is coming from social networks than organic search. Evidence of this trend can be seen in the chart below,
which compares Facebook and Google traffic of the top 200 web publishers over the past year and a half:
3

3
Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/one-chart-that-explains-the-transformation-of-medi

To make the most out of social sharing, you need to get users sharing the right content at the right time and to
the right social networks. Doing so requires a combination of the right technology and a strategic approach.
Fortunately, there are many sharing plugins and features available that can help maximize your brands share
performance. In the rest of this section, we will take a look at a variety of social sharing plugins, and provide some
effective techniques for increasing share activity and referral traffic.
Types of Sharing
Sharing happens across the web in many different formats. In fact, every minute we share 684,478 pieces of
content to Facebook, publish over 100,000 tweets to Twitter, check into 2,083 places on Foursquare, and upload
3,600 photos to Instagram.
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Below, weve mapped out the common ways in which sharing happens around the
web to give you an idea for how sharing plugins can be applied to your online business, and to help you make
sense of the social sharing spectrum.
Aggregate Sharing An aggregate share plugin is used to enable sharing to many social networks from a single
button. Once setup, users can click on a share button, select the social network they want to share to, and initiate
the share process.
Official Buttons - Official share buttons, such as the Facebook Like button, Twitter Tweet button, Google +1
button, and Pinterest Pin It button, are frequently used to enable sharing to specific social networks. These
buttons can be implemented by copying and pasting code found on the social network developer sites, or
through integration with a 3
rd
party share plugin.

4
Domo How Much Data is Created Every Minute - http://www.domo.com/blog/2012/06/how-much-data-is-created-every-minute/
Aggregate Share Button Official Social Network Share Buttons

Action-Based Sharing Have you ever been prompted to share to a social network immediately following an
interaction on a website? If so, then youve experienced action-based sharing at work. Action-based sharing
prompts users to share after taking a particular action such as making a purchase, completing a poll, or earning a
badge. Action-based sharing can be extremely effective, increasing share rates by as much as 4x.
5
In the example
below, Eventbrite prompts users to share after registering for an event.

Multi-Network Sharing Multi network sharing allows users to broadcast content to multiple social
networks at once. Its a more advanced method of sharing that provides socially savvy users with a way to
distribute content more efficiently.
Frictionless Sharing Frictionless sharing
streamlines the way users share by leveraging
Facebooks Open Graph to seamlessly share user
actions. Frictionless sharing enables websites or
apps to post user activity by defining actions and
objects within the user experience. In the
example to the right, Spotify posts the instance
of listening (action) to Sleeping Ute (object) by
Grizzly Bear (object) to the users Facebook
Timeline.

5
Gigya Share Plugin - http://www.gigya.com/share-plugin/

Location Sharing Location sharing takes advantage of location-based technologies, allowing users to reveal
their location along with a shared item. Location sharing typically happens from a mobile device due to the
fact that many mobile applications provide users with a way to share remote activities such as an event they
are attending or a restaurant where they are eating.
Image Sharing Image sharing allows users to share photos taken from mobile devices and photos found on
the web with their social networks. Image sharing has become so popular, that social networks like Pinterest
and Instagram have created platforms completely built around image sharing.
Sharing Best Practices
OFFER SHARING TO MULTIPLE SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social networks make it possible for users to communicate using multiple personas over the web. For instance, a
user will typically use their Facebook persona to interact with friends, leverage their LinkedIn persona to grow
their professional relationships, and follow celebrities and influencers they admire using their Twitter persona.
These various personas help dictate which types of content are shared to various social networks. For example, a
user may want to share an article to LinkedIn because it has information that would be valuable for that users
colleagues to know. Alternatively, the same user may want to share a different article to Facebook because it is
relevant to topics theyve discussed with friends or family.

As you implement share plugins, be sure to account for a variety of user personas when deciding which social
destinations to include on your website. Its also a good idea to take the information that youve accumulated
from industry experience to offer share options for the most relevant social networks. Finally, after a significant
amount of share activity occurs on your site, you should have enough data to identify which social networks your
users prefer. From there, you can add, re-order, and remove sharing destinations to maximize performance.
Insider Tip: Before implementing share options, find out which social networks are driving noticeable traffic to your
website. Its highly likely that users want the ability to share to those social networks.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
In order for users to share your content, they have to be able to easily locate your share options. To maximize
content sharing, its best to display your share plugin(s) in a prominent area on your website that has a
consistent location across all pages. Having a clear call to action, and an appropriate amount of whitespace
surrounding your share options, will also make it easier for users to recognize share buttons and share to their
preferred social network.
INCLUDE OFFICIAL SOCIAL NETWORK SHARING BUTTONS
Many social networks offer official buttons that are specifically designed for sharing to
that social network. Such buttons include Facebooks Like, Recommend, and
Subscribe buttons, Twitters Hashtag and Mention buttons, and Googles +1
button. Although its not suggested to use every official social network button available,
its a good idea to include a select few that provide a specific function, and that users are
familiar with.
When adding sharing options to your website, be sure to use a share technology that
supports official social network share buttons. By doing so, you can be sure that integration
is painless and scalable. Finally, be careful not to overwhelm users with too many share
destinations. To find the right balance, we recommend starting out with 4 to 6.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACTION-BASED SHARING
Its likely that many actions on your website are worth sharing. Maybe its a purchased
item, a completed survey, or a watched video. Identify these valuable instances, and use
action-based sharing to prompt users to share after a valued action is completed. By
prompting users to share to social networks at meaningful moments, they become up to
four times more likely to share.
MAKE IT EASY TO SHARE CONTENT BY EMAIL
With more than 200,000,000 email messages being sent every minute, email is still a huge part of web activity,
and a major source of sharing.
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Giving users the option to share via email is a critical part of driving word-of-
mouth awareness for many businesses. When enabling email sharing, be sure to find a share plugin that
supports email sharing and importing email contacts from major providers like Gmail and Yahoo.

6
Domo How Much Data is Created Every Minute - http://www.domo.com/blog/2012/06/how-much-data-is-created-every-minute/

Opening the channels of communication is a key strategy for any online business. By integrating social plugins
for commenting, ratings and reviews, live chat, etc., your users will be empowered to participate in discussions
with people they care about. They will also be more inclined to listen in on interesting conversations and provide
constructive feedback about your content.
In the sections below, we will take an in-depth look at a handful of social plugins that are essential to building
user conversations. We will also provide insight into which plugins and features to consider for your website, as
well as best practices for improving performance.
Comments
One of the best ways to start conversations around your brand is to implement a user commenting system that
allows users post comments on content throughout your website. Comments provide you with a better
understanding of your users, and can be a powerful tool for encouraging user discussions and developing your
brands online community.
From a simple Wordpress plugin, to a fully-featured 3rd party commenting platform, there are a wide variety of
options to consider when integrating a comments plugin into your website. To help shape your decision, weve
listed the core features that every comment plugin should support below:
Social Authentication Make sure users can sign in with a social account to post a comment. Social
authentication lets users quickly authenticate their identity, and increases the chances of comments being shared
to social networks. It also increases comment quality due to the fact that most social accounts are associated with
a persons real-world identity.
Insider Tip: To offer the best user experience, tie commenting to your site authentication system. Whether users register
or sign into your website using a social account or traditional credentials, make sure that they can leave comments
without any friction.
Social Sharing Make it easy for users to share their comments to social networks. Many users want the ability
to share opinions with friends. In fact, 22% of all comments posted to websites are shared to social networks.
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If
your comments plugin does not support this simple feature, you will definitely miss out on increased brand
exposure and social referral traffic.

7
Gigya Blog - http://blog.gigya.com/gigya-data-22-of-comments-and-reviews-are-shared-to-social-networks/

Customization Websites come in all shapes and sizes, so its critical to have the ability to customize your
comments plugin according to your websites design. When selecting a plugin, look for customization features that
allow for comment display limits, pagination controls, sort order, and CSS styling.

SEO Friendliness Use a comments plugin that supports SEO-friendly comments. Most websites that have SEO-
friendly comments will see a noticeable amount of organic traffic coming from long-tail keywords that derived
from high-quality user comments.
Notifications Keep users informed about topics they care about with comment notifications. By allowing users
to follow their own comments and subscribe to interesting comment threads, they will be more inclined to return
to your website and keep the conversation going.
Moderation With the proper moderation tools in place, you can ensure that only quality comments appear on
your website. Many comments plugins include a moderation dashboard that makes it easy to monitor comments
and scale moderation efforts. In regards to moderation, be sure to select a comments system that allows for user
blocking, dirty-word filters, comment flagging, pre- and post-moderation, and comment voting.

Ratings & Reviews
Integrating ratings and reviews functionality into your website gives users the ability to provide constructive
feedback that can be useful for both your community and for monitoring product or content quality. For the
most part, the same features that are essential for comments can be applied as criteria for your ratings and
reviews plugin selection. In the list below, you will find key features to consider when making your decision.
Authentication Options Give users the option to post a review by authenticating their identity through social
login or through a traditional site account. By allowing users to post reviews using their preferred online identity,
you can increase the chances customer feedback.
Design Flexibility Most ratings systems come equipped with a five star layout that can be configured to your
preferences. Your ratings and reviews plugin should provide the flexibility to control layout settings such as how
many reviews to display on a page, and how reviews are sorted. Furthermore, you should be able to customize
the look-and-feel of star ratings to match the aesthetic and context of your website.
SEO Friendliness SEO-friendly reviews can significantly increase the chances of your website showing up for
long-tail keywords in organic search results. They can also provide insight into frequently-searched keywords
that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Reactions
Reactions, or a reactions plugin, are buttons that let users express opinions about website content in a single
click. Reactions significantly reduce the barriers to website contribution because, with reactions, users can quickly
react to content by clicking a button rather than posting an in-depth comment or review. In addition to serving as
a simple feedback mechanism, reaction buttons can also function as a poll when counters or percentage of clicks
are displayed next to buttons.

To get the best results from reactions, stick to the following best practices:
Take Advantage of Action-Based Sharing - Make it easy for users to share their reactions to social networks by
prompting them to share when a reaction button is clicked.
Match Design Optimize reactions buttons to closely align with the content and look-and-feel of your website.
For example, a cooking website could use reactions buttons that read Delicious, Easy to Make, Burnt it, or
Mmmm.
Call to Action - Have a clear call to action that lets users know when and why they should click a reaction button.
In the example above, NCAA clearly calls out Rate this Game on their NCAA basketball tournament site to grab
the attention of users.
Live Chat
A live chat plugin lets users participate in real-time conversations with your website community. Live chat is
typically used on websites that broadcast live events because it allows users to collaborate with one another as
activity unfolds. When hosting a live chat event, consider the following features to help drive user participation
and awareness:

Twitter Integration - Because Twitter is such a powerful tool for real-time notifications, having a chat plugin that
can pull in tweets from high-profile users, as well as tweets relevant to the topic at hand, is helpful for guiding the
direction of your chat and bringing the social conversation back to your event page.
Social Authentication - Allow users to contribute to your live chat by logging in with a preferred social account.
Social Syndication - Give users the option to broadcast chat messages to Facebook, Twitter, and other relevant
social networks.

In addition to encouraging conversations, a major factor that contributes toward user engagement is designing a
web environment where users can discover meaningful content. Discovery is particularly important because
users will spend more time on site and view more pages when they can easily find interesting content. In this
section, we will take a look at social plugins that are designed specifically for user discovery. These plugins allow
users to explore deeper into your website and eventually lead to increased community discussions.
Activity Feed
An activity feed is a social plugin that displays user actions as they take place across your website. Activity feeds
encourage users to dig into content that other users are interacting with. They also give your website a dynamic
feel as activity is constantly being refreshed. When adding an activity feed to your website, apply the following
techniques for the best results:
Show Friend Activity When possible, display
activity from a users friends to improve content
relevance. Users are more likely to click on an
item when someone they know has viewed or
interacted with it.
Identify Valuable Actions - Its best to display
only high-quality activity rather than flood your
activity feed with every user action that takes
place. So, to optimize your activity feed
performance, you will need to identify which
actions are most valuable to your users and
your business.
Recommendations
Recommendations deliver product or content suggestions to users based on information gathered from
interests, friends, and purchase history. The most common recommendations plugins include real-time feeds,
recommendations as notifications, and recommendations bars which are typically found on an ecommerce or
similar type of website. These plugins are featured in greater detail below.

Recommendations Feed - A recommendations feed is similar to an activity feed in functionality, but instead
displays actions that are relevant to a specific user. The items that appear in a recommendations feed usually
range from content that a users friends have interacted with to purchases from similar users.
Recommendations as Notifications - A common way to provide content suggestions is to display a notification
dialog box after a user scrolls to the bottom of a content page. Recommendation notifications are commonly
found throughout many publishing sites where related articles are recommended based on topic relevancy, and
in some cases (The Washington Posts Trove.com) user interests.
Recommendations Bar A recommendations bar displays recommended products or content within a
designated section of a web page. Examples of recommendations bars are commonly found on ecommerce sites
such as Amazons Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought bar, or Netflixs suggested movies bar.

As you integrate social plugins for sharing, conversation, and discovery into your web experience, youll want to
give users a reason to interact with those plugins. Aside from following the best practices covered in previous
sections, consider applying gamification techniques to incentivize valuable user behaviors and build user loyalty.
In this section, we will take an in-depth look at how gamification can be an effective strategy for many websites.
Well also review some gamification best practices and advanced strategies to provide you with a framework for
building an effective gamified experience on your website.
What is Gamification?
Gamification, in the context that we will be covering, can be defined as integrating game-like devices (points,
badges, leaderboards, notifications, etc.) into a website or mobile application to incentivize valuable user
actions, and reward users when those actions are completed. To help you conceptualize how Gamification can
be applied to your business, weve provided an example from the Pepsi SoundOff community website below.

EXAMPLE: PEPSI SOUNDOFF
Pepsi is using Gamification throughout its SoundOff website to drive engagement around its on-air sponsoring
of events like The XFACTOR and the Super Bowl. On the SoundOff website, Pepsi incentivizes users for the
following actions: logging in, posting a comment, sharing a comment, and liking comments left by other users.
When a user completes any of these actions, he or she is rewarded with points and badges. At first, collecting
badges is easy - for instance, posting an initial comment will reward a user with a My 2 Cents badge. But, as
users increase activity, earning badges becomes increasingly challenging. Earning the next commenting badge
may require five posted comments rather than just one. These elements of gamification keep users coming
back to earn additional achievements and increase their status within the Pepsi SoundOff community. Applying
game mechanics to the user experience also helps Pepsi build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, and
create a positive association with the Pepsi brand.

Finding a Use for Gamification
One of the main benefits of gamification is that it can be used to incentivize nearly any type of user behavior. In
fact, any action that can be tracked on the web can be incentivized through gamification. Actions vary
significantly across different websites and industries, so its important to identify the specific actions that bring
value to your business. To give you an idea of the different types of actions that can be incentivized through
gamification, weve listed a handful of examples below:
LinkedIn incentivizes users to complete their profiles
Nike rewards users for how far and often they run
Stacked Overflow issues badges for quality responses
Cartoon Network awards points and higher levels for playing games.
Each of these examples of gamification has a completely different use case, but all are successfully using
gamification to incentivize key behaviors and achieve defined business goals. If youre not sure which actions are
valuable for your business, start by identifying the actions that you would like users to take when they first
discover your website. To give you some ideas of what to incentivize, weve provided a list of actions that users
are commonly rewarded for through gamification:
Registering for an account
Logging in
Returning site visits
Sharing content to social
networks
Posting a comment
Posting a review
Rating a product or content
Making a purchase
Adding an item to a wish list
Watching a video
Clicking a link
Visiting multiple pages
Completing a profile
Referring a friend
Uploading a picture
Downloading a PDF
Subscribing to a newsletter
*Any action unique to your
business

Game Mechanics Integration
At first, integrating game mechanics into your website can seem like a daunting initiative. Hiring a developer or
assigning your development team to build game-like functionality into your website from scratch is a
complicated, costly, and timely process. Fortunately, there are 3
rd
party gamification plugins available that can
help you deploy game mechanics with ease. When integrating game mechanics into your online experience, its
important to find a solution that offers the following plugins and features.

Profile A profile plugin lets users know where they stand by displaying the overall status of a user. Its typically
found on a users profile page, and summarizes gamification details related to that user such as total points
earned, acquired badges, achievements that have yet to be unlocked, and overall level reached.

Leaderboard A leaderboard plugin displays the top performers throughout your community, and provides
users with an idea of how they compare to other participants. Your leaderboard will help spark friendly
competition and encourages users to work their way to the top.
Insider Tip Tie the social graph into the leaderboard so that users can view how they stack up against their real
friends. By doing so, users will be more likely to engage in friendly competition, and their experience will be more
personalized.
Activity Feed A gamification activity feed streams game-related website activity such as an earned badge or an
unlocked challenge as those events happen on your website. Activity feeds help users see what types of actions
lead to rewards, and encourage user interactions and exploration.
Progress Bar The progress bar maps a users progress towards a specific goal. Progress bars are ideal for
gamification rewards that require multiple steps to complete. For example, LinkedIns progress bar walks a user
through the process of completing an in-depth profile. Steps to complete a LinkedIn profile include actions like
uploading a resume, submitting work skills, and verifying education.
Notifications Notifications inform users of game elements such as which badge or level theyve just unlocked,
how theyve unlocked it, and which actions are needed to reach the next level. Its also common for share options to
be integrated into the notification dialog box to provide users with a way to boast about their achievements on
social networks.

Gamification Best Practices
LEVERAGE SOCIAL NETWORKS
Gamification is inherently social. Users want the option to compete with their real friends and share
achievements theyve earned to social networks. Integrating social features into game mechanics will reduce the
barriers to entry for user participation, as well as increase interactions with your brand - both on your website
and on social networks.

MATCH THE LOOK-AND-FEEL OF YOUR BRAND
Make sure your gamification implementation is
closely tied with the aesthetic and personality of
your brand. For increased engagement, its best to
create badges that are relevant to the context of
your content and incorporate design elements that
can be found throughout your website. By applying
cohesive messaging, and designing a non-
disruptive gamification experience, your users will
be more likely to participate.

TIE IN REAL-WORLD REWARDS
Successful gamification implementations incorporate real-world rewards that badges, levels, and points-earned
ultimately represent. Consider offering contest entries, prizes, authoritative community status, or access to
gated content as a reward for participation. When deciding what to offer, keep in mind why users are visiting
your website or using your app. Its also important to think about how you can improve and differentiate the
user experience between a highly ranked user and a newcomer.
LET USERS KNOW WHATS GOING ON
To ensure participation on your website, its
important to let users know which actions to
take and why to take them. Providing users with
clarity around game mechanics such as how
many points an action is worth, which actions
unlock a particular badge, and when a higher
status is achieved, are all factors that will
increase adoption. When users have a clear
idea of what is needed to achieve a certain goal,
they are much more likely to take action. In the
example to the right, Verizon Wireless gives
users a clear picture of what actions earn points
and how many points those actions are worth
to drive user participation.

Advanced Gamification Strategies
REWARD REPEATABLE ACTIONS
Build an everlasting experience by rewarding actions that can be repeated. The best way to create a lasting
experience is through designing tiered levels for common actions. For instance, an initial comment could earn a
user the Level 1 Comment badge. Leaving 5 comments would earn that user a Level 2 Comment badge, 25
comments would earn Level 3, and so on. Designing a reward system that builds upon itself will give users a
reason to repeat valuable actions and demonstrate their status through achieving higher levels.

SEGMENT ACHIEVEMENTS
Its important to segment user achievements according to which actions can be repeated and which can only be
taken a single time. These two types of actions (repeatable actions and one-off actions), along with strategies for
rewarding for each type of action, are featured below.
One-off actions are actions that typically occur only once or on a very irregular basis. For example, a one-off
action could be when a user enters a contest or discovers a strategically hidden piece of content. To give users a
significant sense of accomplishment, its suggested to setup one-off actions to result in immediate challenge
completion, and the reward of a specialized badge and many points.
Repeatable actions are actions tied to a tiered challenge. With repeatable actions, a user can unlock multiple
badges through a progression of similar actions. For best performance, repeatable actions should be rewarded
with participation levels for that action and treated as a means to communicate user progress toward a desired
level or an avenue for sustained point increases.
MULTI-STEP PROCESSES
Gamification can be used to guide users through complex (and often monotonous) processes. Websites that
require a significant amount of profile information (for example, a job submission or insurance website), or that
have many steps (online education or certification courses), can experience a noticeable increase in goal
completion when applying proper gamification techniques. For multi-step processes, gamification should be
used as a motivation tool that encourages users to reach an end goal and confirms when users are on the right
track through notifications. For example, an education website that has a four-step certification program could
reward users with a badge as each step is completed. At the end of the program, the user would have four
badges to validate their certification (and maybe even a bonus badge for getting through the final step).
SET PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS
Before going live with gamification, be sure to
identify which user actions you are trying to
incentivize. Set benchmark metrics for each of these
actions to establish a starting point for tracking
gamification performance. For example, if your goal
is to increase shares, take note of your average
weekly or monthly shares before going live. From
there, you will have a point of reference to track
performance and optimize accordingly.


Tracking metrics is key when it comes to optimizing the performance of Social Infrastructure on your website.
Being able to measure user behaviors across your web properties will allow you to define a starting point, make
informed decisions, and ultimately prove the value of Social Infrastructure.
What to Track
From social login preferences to gamification actions, there are literally hundreds of Social Infrastructure metrics
that can be measured across your web properties. To help you identify which metrics to focus on, weve
highlighted the critical reports that every online business should be tracking and optimizing on a regular basis.
Registration and Login Preferences By tracking user preferences for registration and login, youll be able to
uncover insights like which social networks your users login with, whether they prefer social login over traditional
login, the percentage of new users who login socially, and how that percentage is performing over time. Having
this information available will allow you to make informed decisions for optimizing your registration and sign-in
processes. For example, if you find that users prefer logging in with Twitter compared to Google, you could place
your Twitter login button in a more prominent position than Google. By continually optimizing in this way, you will
be able to increase the volume of new users and significantly improve conversion rates over time.

Sharing Trends By tracking share activity over time, youll
not only be able to see which social networks users prefer
sharing to, but also which social networks are driving the most
referral traffic to your website. This will enable you to optimize
share plugins to highlight the social destinations that drive the
highest quality shares.
On-site Engagement Knowing what actions users are taking
on your website is essential when it comes to measuring Social
Infrastructure performance. By keeping track of metrics like
comments posted, reaction buttons clicked, and number of
shares coming from social plugins, youll be able to make
changes to increase user interactions. For example, if you
notice that comments are not being posted as frequently as
you would like, you might try changing your comments call to
action, or adding a comments button to the top of your
content page that takes users to the comments plugin when
clicked. After making some simple modifications, youll be able
take a look at comment performance over time and determine
if your change was positive.
Gamification Activity Gamification analytics provide an in-
depth look into user behaviors and insight into how game
mechanics are driving those behaviors. To gain the most from
tracking gamification activity, youll want to keep an eye on
gamification metrics like:
Top actions taken on your website
Top performing users
Most common badges earned
Level distribution throughout your user base
Sticking points for users
By staying on top of these behavior metrics, youll be able to make informed decisions when configuring game
mechanics such as awarded points by action type, multi-step challenges, and daily caps. From there, you can
measure positive or negative effects, make additional adjustments, and repeat.

When Social Infrastructure components like social login, share, comments, and gamification are properly
implemented throughout your web properties, you should have an unprecedented amount of user data available
to analyze and leverage. Its here where the tremendous value of Social Infrastructure can be fully realized. With
so much user data at your fingertips, youll be able to clearly define your target audience, discover actionable user
insights, and apply those insights to your marketing efforts.
Processing Social Data
In order to make sense of available user data, youll need three core functions in place. These functions include
the ability to:
1. Access User Data
2. Define Audience Segments
3. Apply Insights to Marketing
Accessing User Data By now, you know that
social login unlocks access to incredible amounts
of user data, and storing that data requires a
dynamic database. However, once user data is
captured and organized within your database,
you will need the ability to easily access it without
calling upon IT resources.
Traditionally, accessing user data from a company database has not been an easy task for marketers. Theres
typically a lag time to access data due to a lack of IT resources and conflicting priorities. Its common to see
database operations that go something like this:
Data is collected into a database that is controlled by IT departments.
Marketers need access to information within the database for an upcoming marketing campaign, so they
submit a request for IT to produce a marketing-friendly report.
IT prioritizes the project accordingly, and delivers the marketing request in a time frame that ranges
anywhere from one day to months.
Its easy to see that, for non-IT departments within your organization, this is not an ideal situation. For this reason,
you will need to find a user management solution that can be accessed via a web-based dashboard, and provides
a comprehensive view of your entire user base. You should also be able to control colleague access by setting up

admin roles and permissions. In doing so, you can be sure that your data is secure, and that the right people in
your organization will be able to manage user data at any time and from any location.
Defining Audience Segments Once you and your team have a simple way to access user information, you will
then need the ability to define audience segments within it.
An audience segment is a group of users who have an attribute, or a set of attributes, in common. For example,
an audience segment could be all female users between the ages of 25 and 35, or all males who live in San
Francisco and like the Giants.
To discover insights about your audience, its important to have the ability to view the complete profile of any
individual user and, more specifically, influential users. When you can easily locate information such as interests,
friends, education, and location, along with site activity such as comments, ratings, and shares, it will be much
easier to identify which types of users are driving engagement and revenue for your business.
The image below shows an example of a user profile within the Gigya dashboard. You can see that the user has
connected with Facebook and Twitter, and that her profile information is summarized for quick review.

Apply Insights to Marketing Tools With the ability to segment your database via a web-based dashboard, you
will be able to define audience segments with more precision and apply those segments to 3
rd
party marketing
tools with ease. For example, an online retailer who sells womens footwear could send targeted emails to girls in
high school a month before prom by mapping a user segment to an email service provider. Alternatively, a tech
review blog could recommend gadgets to a mechanical engineer based in Silicon Valley using the same
techniques. With the right system in place, the possibilities are nearly limitless. Being able to leverage user data
this way presents marketers with an enormous opportunity to create highly effective marketing campaigns that
can have a huge impact on business performance.


By now, you have a deep understanding of the components that make up Social Infrastructure and have probably
started thinking about how you can leverage Social Infrastructure to meet your business objectives. To give you a
head start, weve listed some items to consider before beginning your path to success.
What are the Driving Forces of Your Business?
If youre not sure where to get started, your initial step should be identifying the
parts of Social Infrastructure that will have the greatest impact on your business.
Want to grow your user base? Start by implementing social login and thinking
about an end-to-end user management system. Looking to increase user activity?
Get started by adding plugins for comments, sharing, or activity feeds. Are there
particular actions that youd like to incentivize? Begin by mapping out your
gamification strategy.
Finding a Solution
There are hundreds of tools and services available that can help you put your Social Infrastructure strategy into
place. When deciding which solution is best for your business, keep the following critical factors in mind:
Make Sure Everything Works Together Its imperative that all components of Social Infrastructure work
together. A logged-in user should be able to share content with one click and seamlessly post a comment without
having to re-authenticate their identity. Gamification actions should automatically be reported by social plugins.
Analytics and user data should be consolidated into one, comprehensive dashboard. When you have one vendor
to power Social Infrastructure across your digital channels, your users benefit from a cohesive web experience,
while your business benefits from easier implementations, consolidated reporting, and a single point of support.
Performance, Security, and Reliability You need to trust that the social tools on your website are always
working smoothly, and are secure for both your users and your business. Be absolutely sure to choose a provider
that has a proven track record of excellence in regards to uptime, response times, and data security.
Support Many components of Social Infrastructure are not easy to do on your own. For this reason, you will
more than likely need assistance when it comes to implementing Social Infrastructure components like social login,
social plugins, and gamification. Whether getting a head start on implementation, ensuring changes to social APIs
are up-to-date, or fixing bugs, youll want to have a support team to rely on at all times.

User expectations on the web have changed. The advent of social networks has taken us from a static web to a
web that is incredibly interactive and personal. To succeed in this new online environment, you need to recognize
this fundamental shift in user expectations, and find a way to integrate Social Infrastructure into the core of your
online business. If you dont, you run the risk of losing customer interest and market share within your industry.
CONGRATULATIONS, YOUVE REACHED THE END!

Gigyas mission is to socialize the rest of the web. We provide websites with a complete social infrastructure that
creates immersive social experiences for users and provides unparalleled customer insights for businesses.
Gigya equips businesses like ABC, Pepsi and Verizon with a comprehensive solution to socialize their online
properties. Our technology enables seamless registration with Social Login and Registration-as-a-Service,
increases traffic and time spent on-site via Social Plugins and Gamification and transforms marketing by
leveraging permission-based social identity data.
Gigya works with more than 600 enterprises and touches more than one billion users per month. Our platform
extracts the real value from social networks, empowering online businesses to attract, engage and understand
users like never before.

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