Members of the LocaModa sales and creative teams are on-site at the Waterfront Westin for The Ad Club’s Branded in Boston event.

Say hello to Steve, Greg, Gabi, and Dan if you see them!

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.

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.

Richard Leibovitz, Editorial Director at Digital Signage Expo, posted a great question on the LinkedIn 2010 Educational Faculty Group Forum about the viability and implementation of a Twitter backchannel at conferences and events.

He asks:

DSE is looking for ways to engage the Twitter backchannel as part of the educational conference discussion at DSE 2010. Please join the discussion by sharing any experience you’ve had with attendees tweeting in conference rooms and any suggestions you might have for using these tweets in a positive way… The other question is whether we ask our session moderators to monitor tweets as a way to gather questions for the speakers, or whether the speakers themselves should be moderating tweets during their sessions so they can respond directly to questions?

I wanted to post my thoughts here since many The Web Outside readers may not be involved in the DSE site (but you should be!)
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I think one of the main sticking points on the moderation discussion is directly related to the definition of ‘backchannel’ itself. The concept of a Twitter backchannel has recently come to the fore of many conference and event planning discussions, but the term has unfortunately taken on a dual definition that’s at odds with itself.

In one camp, event organizers view this backchannel as a means of providing additional context for the event – an ambient reflection of the happenings on the show floor.

In the other camp, the backchannel is understood as a direct means of communication with the speaker or event organizers, a ‘DM’ to the topic/speaker currently at the helm.

The problem with this twofold definition is that each use case begs for entirely different moderation protocol. In the former case, an auto-filter eliminating profanity (and all of its creative permutations!) and racial slurs may be enough in many instances. In the latter, specific context plays a much larger role, and cherry-picking content is often the only route to guaranteeing relevant (if not ‘appropriate’) messages are displayed. It’s actually quite similar to the struggle that contextual advertising software faces.

At LocaModa, we’ve addressed these two scenarios with a moderation system that allows for:
1. auto-filtering at G, R, X ratings
2. human moderation in a queue format
3. a ‘curation’ system that allows for cherry-picking of content in terms of time/relevance

For DSE, I think a Wiffiti screen (with additional hashtagged Twitter and Flickr streams) would work well as an ambient screen in the networking area, and would give the options of auto-filter with optional human moderation if the self-advertising gets out of hand.

Using the screen as a specific pairing with a speaker is always a dodgier situation, especially when conferences attempt to pigeonhole its use into a standard Q&A format. This backchannel shouldn’t replace human interaction, but rather, enhance it. As an ambient channel, Wiffiti can be a very powerful tool. As a replacement for rote Q&A session transcription, I’d recommend sticking with manual entry Powerpoint.
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I’d love to hear other industry views on this topic… Do you think some of the resistance of the real-time format is directly connected to the conflicting definitions of how a backchannel should be most effectively framed and viewed?