Social Connectors on Login

The most instantly gratifying Social Connectors are the ability for you to Login on another site using your existing Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn Profile - you’re most likely logged in on one of those already anyway, and most people have too many passwords to remember, I am forever re-setting mine.

Social Connectors on Login are there to encourage interested parties to get involved in your site with the minimum of effort.

For most sites however, especially Member Sites, we recommend that Social Connectors be not applied on Login, but rather on Registration, as the key Objective for most sites is to win over Users, and have their details in your own database. Using Social Connectors on Login means you don’t get the essential email addresses which you need to conduct a dialogue with that User. On Registration, the Social Connectors just act as a sort of ’Starter for 10!’ - where you still need to fill in required fields to complete the form. You can incentivise your potential customers in various ways to encourage them to Register!

In Affino terms, Social Connectors have 2 distinct functions:

• Connection / Login - simple site access
• Content Sharing - this requires additional approvals via External Integration - so that your ’Updates / Tweets’ can be shared between sites

The second type is detailed further down the page under ’External Integration’.

Note - contrary to popular belief - only the minimum of details are passed over between sites - access is granted by a secure encrypted token system; there is no substitution for proper full Registration to acquire proper and full customer details.

Engagement Panel Design Element

On the adjacent screen capture, the red outline highlights the Engagement Panel Design Element - a component which was specifically engineered to encourage Engagement / Participation on a site.

The Panel simply features 5 tabs, as it encourages potential users to get involved as quickly and as easily as is possible.

Authentication Profiles and Social Connectors need to be completed before and Engagement Profile can be set up - there’s dozens of optional settings - so that you can choose which tabs appear and in which order.

Note also the larger Button Social Connectors to the right of the Engagement Panels, these are just ’Auto Link’ option on the ’Button’ Design Element.

It may look a little like overkill, but Comrz.com is as much a showroom as a functioning business site, and we need to show everyone how all these great functionalities work on a practical basis.

External Integration

The ’Type 2’ Social Connectors, where you authorise content sharing between an Affino Site and Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also set up a bit.ly profile which is a great URL shortener utility for ensuring you get maximum utility from you 140 Tweet characters.

Lots of people use Tumblr and Hoot Suite to distribute Updates and Blogs to several systems - so you can just upload to a central resource which feeds out your content to the other Networks. Affino goes one better by enabling a two-way relationship - so that you can upload to any site within the extended network (External Integration) and Affino will push or pull as appropriate.

On the adjacent screen capture you can see the various settings for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and bit.ly .

Content Sharing in Action

On the screen capture to the right you can see the end product of External Integration - on Blog Comments in this instance. The 3 Social Networks have all been authenticated for content sharing - which is why we have 3 Share icons appearing below the Comment entry field.

Currently all three Share functions are ’On’ - you can see the overlay prompt on LinkedIn Share stating - ’Share to LinkedIn: ON’ - these settings are stateful, and the system remembers what they were set to in your last session. Of course if you don’t want to share, you can switch them all off by simply clicking on those buttons.

For most sites, Social Connectors serve 3 essential purposes:

• Open your site to a wider target audience
• Encourage easier participation on your site
• Use content sharing to promote Site Content to the major Social Networks - attracting further attention etc. etc.