May 2010
WorldClassID Technical White Paper - Social Media Social Media Marketing Services
What is Social Media Content Distribution?
Many organizations produce and manage large quantities of content as a routine part of doing business. Recently, these firms have begun to move beyond simply creating and managing that information to focus on enabling widespread, automated distribution of their business-critical content to users outside the corporate firewalls and into the social networking world. A key motivating factor for automated Social Media Content Distribution is the rapid growth of hundreds of social networking websites. These social networking websites are intended to help minimize distribution and procurement costs while opening up new revenue opportunities, but their success depends largely on each company’s ability to share and distribute useful business information. Along with automated and efficient distribution, the control and security of distributed content is also vital to the growth and success of content exchange relationships.
Through the use of automated Social Media Content Distribution, enterprises can now build and expand vital content-based social networking websites. These social networking websites lower a company’s infrastructure costs relative to manual systems while simultaneously boosting revenue potential throughout the .digital supply chain of partners, customers, suppliers, distributors, and other entities. Social Media Content Distribution has grown in importance as a result of several technological and economic changes, including:
· The increasing .e-enablement. of corporate data and legacy information sources, to which partners and customers demand personalized access
· An overall drive to increase partnership and collaboration as a means to remain viable and competitive, including the establishment of content exchange relationships and collaborative networks
· The explosion in business data formats, end-user display devices, and pervasive, round-the-clock connectivity, requiring more varied and flexible infrastructures
How Social Media Content Distribution Complements
Social Media Content Distribution is a natural extension of enterprise content management (ECM). With Social Media Content Distribution capabilities, businesses can capitalize and synergize on key ECM investments in Web content management, document management, digital asset management, and collaboration to improve valuable relationships with partners.
Each ECM area involves the creation and management of content assets to facilitate widespread participation, eliminate process bottlenecks, and streamline production. Social Media Content Distribution enhances all of these processes by enabling content assets to be redistributed outside the enterprise to social networking websites and social media destinations in a controlled fashion. Social Media Content Distribution also complements ECM internally by supporting the deployment of content from the same source out to different intra-enterprise systems, such as Web servers, departmental portals, and archives.
Social Media Content Distribution is closely related to another key ECM component, content aggregation, as it enhances the value of both local content and content aggregated from disparate remote sources. Security and control, including access and usage management, are additional ECM components that complement Social Media Content Distribution in many situations.
Adding automated Social Media Content Distribution to ECM leads to greater cross-enterprise collaboration, improved partner relationships, and new direct and indirect revenue opportunities. For example, Social Media Content Distribution allows a company to take content created for one Web site or portal and easily repurpose and distribute it to dozens of destinations (typically, Web sites or portals at other social networking websites), which in turn leads to greater brand and product visibility, improved partner relationships, and increased sales.
Leveraging Social Media Content Distribution to Reduce Costs and Grow Revenue
The Social Media Content Distribution model is about building tight, long-lasting, and profitable relationships with partners and customers through the selection and delivery of business-critical content into as many social networking websites as possible. The subscribers to a company’s Social Media Content Distribution system include any business constituents who are members of hundreds of social networking websites.
Social Media Content Distribution can be an effective agent for cost reduction by creating a scalable method for efficiently assembling and routing the proper content to the correct destinations. For some companies, automated Social Media Content Distribution can be used to eliminate the high costs of printing, mailing, and other time-consuming manual distribution processes. For others, an automated Social Media Content Distribution system can complement existing sales channels and partner and customer relationships, reducing the burden of manual processes and increasing efficiency, productivity, and service flexibility.
For all businesses, Social Media Content Distribution provides the ability to flexibly serve a large number of constituents, ensuring content consistency across a large number of destinations and achieving faster ROI for new and existing content oriented social networking websites. With automated Social Media Content Distribution, organizations can focus on enhancing their core business relationships and not worry about technology or implementation costs or other peripheral concerns.
On the revenue side, Social Media Content Distribution supports both direct and indirect business models. Distribution can involve the direct sale of documents and data provided as content offerings, which can be purchased, licensed, or even repackaged and redistributed. This model has traditionally been used by media and entertainment companies where it is known as .syndication,. and can include intermediaries such as aggregators, syndicators, or service directories that facilitate commerce in content. Social Media Content Distribution extends the syndication model beyond the media and entertainment industries to any industry in which content can be used to indirectly create revenue by empowering resellers to sell and encouraging customers to purchase. Here, content itself isn’t for sale, but its managed and targeted distribution leads to increased sales and expanded revenue opportunities.
Business Benefits of Social Media Content Distribution
Social Media Content Distribution is important because it helps create better communication, cooperation, and understanding among businesses through the delivery of timely, accurate, personalized, and consistent information. By improving communication, Social Media Content Distribution strengthens relationships with partners, which in turn helps each organization reduce its own costs while increasing revenue potential.
For example, with a powerful Social Media Content Distribution infrastructure, a manufacturing company can provide resellers with timely product content targeted for their particular demographic and technical parameters, which increases product and brand visibility. Customers get business-critical information delivered directly to their internal systems, enhancing and encouraging sales transactions. An internal subscriber, on the other hand, uses distribution to ensure that the freshest content from many different internal sources is available to end users such as employees and partners.
In every industry sector, the need to efficiently and easily consolidate, integrate, and distribute business-critical content is of growing importance. However, to maximize the value of Social Media Content Distribution, organizations need to:
· Reduce the costs associated with manual processes such as printing and mailing product and sales literature
· Distribute content automatically to disparate internal and external constituents in a flexible and timely manner
· Increase the number and the value of relationships with partners and customers, without similarly growing infrastructure or staffing costs
· Control and monitor content use to ensure it is consistent, appropriate, and effective
· Drive sales of associated products and services through delivery of product marketing content
· Pursue new business opportunities based on reselling content and data
· Comply with government regulations on disclosure and distribution
The ability to meet these challenges can have a bottom-line impact for any business. For example, with social media content distribution:
· A clothing manufacturer can realize additional revenue from out-of-season product lines because it can quickly and efficiently distribute updated product images, descriptions, and pricing information to online and offline wholesalers and retailers
· A mutual fund company can efficiently serve resellers, advisors, and other key partners and decrease infrastructure and support costs, enhance service and product differentiation, and increase market share
· A market research firm can offer customers increased flexibility in content choice and delivery while still maintaining full control over content usage, and at the same time introduce new, targeted content products with minimal overhead
The WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Service for Automated Social Media Content Distribution
Built on a strong tradition of managing information across and beyond the enterprise, WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Services (SMMS) is an integrated system for creating and controlling Social Media Content Distribution relationships between a content provider and a network of recipients, in this case hundreds of social networking websites.
SMMS is highly complementary to WorldClassID product offerings in content aggregation and inter-enterprise workflow, with which it shares an underlying technology framework. Together, SMMS and these related products present a comprehensive solution for automated content exchange and cross-enterprise collaboration. SMMS is also a natural fit with the WorldClassID social media rights management framework, as access and usage control are equally essential for local and distributed digital content.
With WorldClassID SMMS, companies can meet growing partnership requirements by assembling content from internal repositories and exposing it to both internal and external users in a controlled, secured, and automated manner. SMMS allows these firms to extend their digital supply chain from back-end repositories through sophisticated systems that manage everything from documents to rich media assets, and out to their vast network of suppliers, distributors, customers, and other content subscribers.
WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Services in Real-World Applications
With WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Services, organizations in virtually every industry; financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, travel and hospitality, media, retail, and government can improve service to customers and partners and rapidly increase their exposure and revenue potential. Some businesses, particularly in the media and entertainment space, may even operate a .channels-only. content model, with all revenue coming from redistribution of original content products (similar to the traditional syndication model). Other firms may look at Social Media Content Distribution as a means to disseminate critical information within the enterprise to employees, business
units, and other internal constituents.
By seamlessly integrating a powerful Social Media Content Distribution system into the leading enterprise content management infrastructure, WorldClassID SMMS enables organizations to:
· Reduce or eliminate traditional mail and delivery costs by deploying an integrated system for distributing any type of digital content asset to numerous destinations, including public Web sites, reporting systems, trading exchanges, intranets, and wireless devices
· Pursue new business opportunities and revenue streams through social networking websites with other organizations that share in the creation, collaboration, and distribution of content such as multimedia files or product datasheets
· Manage the flow of information and maintain greater control throughout the digital supply chain of suppliers, distributors, partners, resellers, and customers
· Strengthen business relationships and reach out more efficiently to partners, customers, and employees through both automated and personalized interactions
· Ensure regulatory compliance through documented and verifiable Social Media Content Distribution, including the ability to delete, modify, and recall distributed content, as well as revoke access through digital rights management
· Deploy an integrated solution for enterprise content management and distribution without piecing together incomplete products from multiple vendors
Organizations that can realize significant value through implementing WorldClassID SMMS include:
· Financial institutions that regularly print and distribute customized reports, prospectuses, and other detailed and confidential information to partners, resellers, and institutional customers
· Manufacturers that want to improve the consistency and timeliness of catalogs, product information, and documentation they share with OEM customers and distributors
· Government agencies looking to automatically inform other institutions and agencies of the creation or modification to existing laws, directives, policies, and guidelines
· Pharmaceutical companies that are legally required to share large amounts of test data and other documentation with insurance companies, distributors, hospitals, and regulatory bodies in a controlled and consistent fashion
The challenge faced by all these enterprises is to meet business demand for increased content-based social networking websites while avoiding one-off implementations that are hard to create, maintain, or modify a challenge readily met by WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Services.
An Overview of WorldClassID SMMS Functionality
WorldClassID SMMS enables Social Media Content Distribution through a set of easy-to-use services for creating and managing the entire Social Media Content Distribution process. SMMS supports both passive (request-based) and active (automated .push.) distribution with a range of popular standards and protocols, including industry-specific XML formats such as ICE (Information and Content Exchange) and RSS (Rich Site Summary).
SMMS makes use of any type of content stored in any number of database, file system, or WorldClassID repositories. SMMS allows both content providers and recipients to define the format and other parameters of the distributed content. For example, some recipients may want XML-formatted data for easy integration, while others may want pre-formatted HTML or WML for direct placement on a Web or wireless site.
Any number of subscribers can use SMMS, and each subscriber can set up any number of subscriptions. Subscriptions can be triggered on-demand or on a scheduled basis, and subscribers have the option of refreshing an entire subscription history in case of data loss or system failure. With the ICE protocol, a special SMMS client application is used to receive the content, optionally transform it, and then deploy it to the subscriber’s local repository.
Content Distribution Services
Content can be transformed and distributed from any WorldClassID repository, database, or file system to subscribers via ICE, FTP, or e-mail.
Content delivery in SMMS is secure and can be confirmed by recipients, ensuring dependable and controllable distribution. Further, activity can be tracked all the way from the point of distribution to the end user, allowing providers to monitor for proper use of their valuable content assets. A customizable reporting system provides insight into distribution activity and subscriber behavior.
Administration of the SMMS applications is done via customizable Web-based user interfaces. Configuration wizards and a context-sensitive help system guide configuration tasks, and scalable browsing capabilities aid in managing large numbers of subscribers, offers, and subscriptions.
The Importance of Leveraging a Standards-Based Platform
Built on open standards and leveraging leading technologies, the WorldClassID SMMS architecture delivers solid scalability and extensibility as well as fast time-to-value and reduced implementation cost for any technology environment.
SMMS is based on the WorldClassID content exchange framework, a J2EE-based architecture that leverages the robust application infrastructure, security, and integration provided by leading application servers. SMMS takes advantage of open standards such as XML, ICE, EJB, JSP, and JDBC to provide enterprise-class performance, reliability, and security. The SMMS server application runs on top of a J2EE-compliant application server while the SMMS client, required only for ICE-based distribution, runs in a lower-profile (and zero-cost) Java servlet container.
The SMMS server application is typically deployed on a dedicated server machine, separate from source repositories. The server uses a configuration database for managing subscribers, offers, and subscriptions, which may be on the same or a separate machine. The SMMS client (for ICE delivery) may be deployed standalone or on the same system as a destination repository.
The principal J2EE technology used in SMMS is Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), which provides a framework for the core software components that process and distribute content. The customizable user interfaces are based on the JavaServer Pages (JSP) standard, as is the template transformation engine. Internal communication utilizes the Java Messaging Services (JMS). A full-featured API supports integration with third-party applications and a robust security layer ensures only authorized administrators and subscribers can access the system.
The Role of WorldClassID SMMS in the Distribution Process
WorldClassID SMMS works on the principle of offers and subscriptions. In SMMS, an offer is essentially a query into a WorldClassID repository, database, or file system. A content provider creates and manages offers with SMMS, tuning the queries to return an exact set of desired content. These offers are then made available to subscribers, individuals or groups who use the system to select and create subscriptions. SMMS then distributes the content using one or more methods. WorldClassID SMMS provides the technology that enables each step in this process, and in fact automates the process to reduce or eliminate the time and costs of manual involvement.
To create a subscription, a subscriber selects an available offer and configures a destination for delivering the content. The subscriber can choose an optional template or style sheet (see below) with which to transform the content, and can specify a schedule for the delivery. Content offers are also updated on a scheduled or on-demand basis, ensuring that content is up-to-date and consistent for all subscribers. This ability of SMMS to perform synchronized distribution is an important requirement for organizations in regulated industries, enabling reliable presentation of content regardless of the location, format, or subsequent unrecorded changes to the original repository.
The content provider can present offers individually to subscribers, or multiple offers can be grouped together into .offer bundles. and presented to subscribers as if they were a single offer, providing a powerful way to unify content from disparate sources into one offering. Grouping is also an easy way to manage large numbers of users and their content offer entitlements.
With SMMS, content offers can also be embargoed, or held until a certain time before which no subscribers can see them. Offers can also expire at a future date, after which they will stop providing content. These controls allow providers to create temporary offerings, develop promotions, and obey any regulatory requirements governing content availability.
Support for Different Content Sources
WorldClassID SMMS can pull content from any number of database, file system, or WorldClassID repositories. The richest and most sophisticated repository SMMS supports is WorldClassID Content Server. Any type of content can be distributed from a WorldClassID repository, including text files, word processing documents, and rich media files.
All content in a given Content Server folder or cabinet can be made available for distribution, or content can be filtered based on renditions or formats, versions, attribute values, and other simple or complex parameters to meet the specific requirements for a content offer. SMMS also supports the WorldClassID Site Caching Services (formerly WebCache) repository for Web sites, allowing companies to leverage existing infrastructure and publishing processes that support Web content systems.
But while SMMS is an essential complement to content management, document management, or digital asset management systems, it can also be deployed in a standalone environment utilizing a database or file system repository. For a database repository, SMMS utilizes a SQL query to retrieve any kind of content or data. The system can be configured to recognize key pieces of metadata in the database source, and it automatically detects changes to ensure recipients receive consistent and fresh content.
SMMS also works with simple file system repositories, supporting file pattern filters, configurable directory scan level, and the detection of changes to files (indicating a new version). This flexibility of content sources makes SMMS particularly well-suited for serving enterprise-wide Social Media Content Distribution needs, which often require integration of content from diverse commercial and custom repositories.
Tracking and Reporting Social Media Content Distribution Activity
For many companies, monitoring Social Media Content Distribution activity is essential for billing, financial analysis, provisioning, or other business needs. To assist in reporting and record-keeping, WorldClassID SMMS captures and stores records of all activity, including offer execution, subscription delivery, confirmation status, and notifications.
Additionally, through a remote usage tracking system in SMMS, content originators can monitor end-user access to distributed content. A special tag inserts an invisible image reference in distributed HTML documents. This image tag references a SMMS remote tracking agent, which records every end-user access to content, including identifiers for the content being accessed, the subscriber providing the content to the end user, and the subscription that delivered it from the provider. An integral part of SMMS, the remote tracking system can be quickly implemented for both internal and external distribution and is easily customizable, representing a significant advantage over hosted monitoring and reporting services.
Together, internal event recording and remote usage tracking give content providers real-time access to rich data on system usage and subscriber and end-user behavior. To process and analyze this data, SMMS includes a reporting framework for creating packaged and custom reports on Social Media Content Distribution activity. Usage data from SMMS can also be used by enterprise reporting and business intelligence applications.
The Power of WorldClassID Social Media Social Media Marketing Services
With WorldClassID SMMS, companies can meet growing partnership requirements by assembling content from internal repositories and exposing it to both internal and external users in a controlled, secured, and automated manner. SMMS allows these firms to extend their digital supply chain from back-end repositories through sophisticated systems that manage everything from plain-text documents to rich media assets, and out to an expanding network of suppliers, distributors, customers, and other content subscribers.
SMMS enhances and extends any organization’s digital supply chain by:
· Facilitating collaboration among partners and internal business units through targeted distribution of content to remote Web sites, intranet portals, e-mail systems, and back-office applications
· Linking disparate partners and their business systems using industry-standard technologies and protocols, enabling companies to realize rapid time-to-value in building vital content exchange networks
· Empowering business users to configure and manage complex Social Media Content Distribution relationships with easy-to use, fully customizable Web-based user interfaces
· Balancing sophisticated and automated delivery with flexible content transformation and self-service capabilities, representing a significant advantage over manual or limited homegrown distribution systems
Product Feature Summary
WorldClassID SMMS is the only Social Media Content Distribution solution fully integrated with an industry-leading enterprise content management platform. Key SMMS features include the following:
Support for technology standards: SMMS is based on the WorldClassID content exchange framework, a J2EEbased architecture that leverages the robust application infrastructure, security, and integration provided by leading application servers. SMMS utilizes standard technologies such as EJB, JSP, XML, XSL, and ICE.
Integration with the WorldClassID platform: SMMS directly extends WorldClassID’s enterprise content
management system, leveraging existing content infrastructure to distribute content from WorldClassID Content Server and Site Caching Services repositories.
Broad support for content repositories and destinations: Companies using SMMS can also distribute content from a database or file system. The SMMS client then delivers the distributed content into a file system, enabling an easy integration with any content application at the destination side.
Scalable configuration: SMMS provides easy-to-use Web-based interfaces for configuring and managing large numbers of Social Media Content Distribution relationships, including the definition and specification of subscribers and subscriber groups, offers and offer bundles, templates and style sheets, and subscriptions.
Flexible delivery options: SMMS supports the industry-standard ICE protocol for Social Media Content Distribution as well as FTP and e-mail. ICE is the most robust and full-featured method, while FTP and e-mail are simpler and more commoditized. Based on specific subscriber requirements, distribution can be scheduled at a wide range of times or repeating intervals or run on-demand, and distributed content can be refreshed at any time.
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