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.

Copyblogger has a great post today about utilizing ‘digital scraps’ to produce new content. Although the recommendation of repurposing media byproducts to jumpstart new products (or enhance existing ones) is simple, his tips can also be applied to place based media networks and campaigns.

A few ideas:

* Interactive cross-channel campaigns like Be Here benefit from a wide array of content submissions and messages. Encourage users to send in their media nuggets that don’t necessarily fit into their honeymoon album or family photo wall. Think of digital photo walls as the perfect place to submit that photo that is returned at the top of the “Interesting” search result query on Flickr.

* Wiffiti is basically a digital stream of consciousness conversation. There’s no need for users to overthink your CTA. In fact, simple CTAs produce more organic (not to mention more free-form, engaging and fun) content streams. For images, channel your inner Duchamp; txts can be sent in the spirit of Burroughs.

* Posting a contextually-relevant Wiffiti screen on your website invites a constant flow of user input that is automatically collated and displayed to your readers. This online version (whether embedded on Facebook, a dedicated microsite, or within an affiliated blog post), while technically a byproduct of a place based product, is a no-brainer as a value-add.

* The most successful place based apps often mashup multiple social media utilities (e.g. Wiffiti, Foursquare, Twitter, Flickr). Why not join the party?

In the place based mediasphere, encouraging recycling isn’t just the responsible thing to do, it’s the most fun for your viewers, too ;)

Because I don’t think it received nearly the attention it deserved the first time I posted about it, I wanted to pay heed to an original white paper by LocaModa Senior Systems Architect, Jacob Elder, entitled Twitter on Place Based Screens: Why It’s Not So Simple.

With the rise of place-based social media and new digital signage networks popping up everywhere, Jacob’s paper explains the complexities of real-time content display and the operational baggage that comes with it. For venues looking to integrate social media into their digital display network, it’s a must read.

Download the free full pdf version.

Last week, LocaModa announced a new white paper published by Senior Platform Architect Jacob Elder, which examines the technical and operational challenges of streaming real-time social media content on place-based screens.

Using Elder’s paper as inspiration, I wanted to point up a some of the unique features of custom LocaModa campaigns that prove why these executions aren’t as cut-and-dry as plugging in a monitor at an event and calling it a ‘feedback channel.’

1. Ability to automatically filter URLs from Twitter messages for place-based displays
According to Costin Raiu, Chief Security Expert at Kaspersky, 26% of Twitter messages contain a URL (and half of those are spam). In a standard DOOH Twitter to Screen execution (without touch screen ability), these links often serve as eyeball clutter for viewers. While some URLs within Twitter messages may be paired with enough context to make sense, the ambient nature of the application doesn’t assign them enough value to compensate for the screen real estate they occupy.

This proves particularly resonant for messages containing bit.ly links, where the context is hidden from the viewer. In a way, it’s the DOOH equivalent of going to a wine tasting with a burnt tongue and a stuffy nose.

That said, many clients choose to include links, which is their preference (we’re happy to guide the experience, but it’s up to the individual needs of the event or venue). But with one simple step in the LocaModa admin panel, all messages containing “http” or “www” or “bit.ly” can be removed.

2. Ability for a ‘Screen Reveal’
Sometimes, the background of a Twitter to Screen, Text to Screen, or Photo to Screen display is ultra cool, yet we never get to see it behind all of the streaming social media content. Enter the ‘screen reveal’ feature. Opt for this, and the messages will disperse in set intervals (1 min, 3 minutes, etc). The screen below was used for Foursquare founder Naveen’s birthday ‘prom’… we had to showcase that hot background image!

These features are available as custom LocaModa executions – Check out our App Store for a general overview of content options.

MoMA has announced a fascinating acquisition to their collection this morning: @.

The MoMA blog outlines the full rationale behind @‘s honorable new status, but in sum:

The appropriation and reuse of a pre-existing, even ancient symbol—a symbol already available on the keyboard yet vastly underutilized, a ligature meant to resolve a functional issue (excessively long and convoluted programming language) brought on by a revolutionary technological innovation (the Internet)—is by all means an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy.

As the post goes on to explain, Ray Tomlinson (of BBN), who is credited with developing the earliest email system, is said to have chosen ‘@’ for ‘its strong locative sense.’ The rise of location based services and place based networks has elevated its status even more. @ has become more than a functional address designation, but rather a mark of identity – the “I’m talkin’ to you” of the digital world.

This broadening of meaning points up a related conceptual shift: DIGITAL.

Because we’re neck-deep in ‘digital’ issues all day, every day here at LocaModa, it’s hard to track the evolution of a term when it’s continually mutating. That said, over the past few years, particularly in the advertising and DOOH arenas, ‘digital’ has taken on a far heftier meaning than as a simple binary to ‘analog.’ Digital projects are now expected to not only recognize their audience, but also react and respond. Oddly enough, digital has has taken a joyride down the binary spectrum and now connotes a near-human sense of interactivity and engagement.

And, frankly, if you’re still viewing digital as a counterpoint to print, your audience may no longer be able to discern the difference.