This post is the third in a series of Tips for Displaying Social Media Content on Place Based Screens. Previous posts in the series discussed removing URLs and revealing backgrounds and the value of curation.
Many of LocaModa’s social applications involve pulling in content from Twitter and Flickr. In addition to basic Twitter to Screen and Flickr to Screen apps, more specialized apps like social polls and the Foursquare app also rely on tagged social media content in addition to real-time text to screen capabilities. As discussed in my post yesterday on Moderation v. Curation, engaging content proves essential to grabbing eyeballs for more than a split second, particularly in people-packed places. I’ll say it again: curation proves to be the best route to clean, culled content.
But what if your campaign is on a smaller scale than most LocaModa cross-channel executions, and you choose to rely on tagging alone to bring in relevant messages. Are you instantly hampered by misappropriated, mishmashed content?
Not if you tag smart.
Here’s a round-up of social media tagging tips from our years of experience here at Loca. Although these guidelines overlap in many ways with basic SEO and keyword marketing logic, these tips focus more specifically on place-based displays.
1. For a screen directly correlated to a specific venue, be careful if your bar or cafe name is on the generic side. No one at Joe’s Gourmet Pizza wants to know that “haha… my bro Joe stayed at the bar til 4am and then puked pizza on the cat. lol.” Well, maybe they do. But probably not while they’re eating.
Instead of tagging simply “joe” and “pizza,” tag the entire phrase “Joe’s Gourmet Pizza.” You’ll sacrifice message volume the more specific you are, but you’ll gain precision. If you’re not going to go the curation route, specificity in tagging will save you headaches from patrons later.
2. Watch your homophones. As an example of our current World Cup campaign: the Brazil superstar, Kaka. You giggle; Venue owners won’t. Toilet humor and selling sandwiches don’t mix.
3. Some venues try to take the easy way out and tag their screens with random “fun” tags like “party,” “bash,” and “awesome,” thinking it will pull in light, happy messages. Well, let’s experiment. I just went to Twitter and searched for “party.” The first tweet in the list:
It’s not offensive, but it’s certainly irrelevant, particularly if the venue was going for a fun and light vibe. In short, perform multiple Twitter and/or Flickr searches for the tags you have in mind before committing. Oftentimes, the context you’re thinking about isn’t the prevalent one.
4. Along the same vein, watch your hashtags. If you’re staging the National Safety for Farm Workers convention, you probably don’t want to tag your screen #nsfw. That’s probably not how you want to envision your horses.
