Solution
Summary
Sociable is the first service tailored specifically for ticketing, event discovery, and event planning sites to connect their users to their social networks. Our goal is to help anyone trying to increase event awareness take advantage of the marketing potential of social media. Our solution has two main components: first, we enable your users to create content for sharing on Facebook ("Sociable Content Creation Tools"), and second, we help distribute that content to the user's friends in a highly targeted fashion ("Sociable Content Distribution Network").
Sociable Content Creation Tools
The first part of the Sociable solution enables your users to take advantage of key elements of Facebook Connect, namely sharing event content via Facebook communication channels. We provide the necessary plumbing to enable your users to post content to their profile ("Wall"), their friends' newsfeeds (now the "Stream"), and send notifications (event invitations) to friends. This is all achieved via integration of the Sociable application. Our solution provides all of the following:
Publishing of feed stories into Facebook
- templates for different user actions (e.g. user bought a ticket, user wants to invite friends)
- A/B testing of copy and links to increase click-thru
- inclusion of multi-media files
- reporting and sales conversion tracking (where applicable)
Sending of notifications from your site to Facebook
- advanced friend filtering options by network and geographic location
- batching of notification sending across multiple days
- templates for different user actions
- A/B testing of copy and links to increase click-thru
- reporting and sales conversion tracking (where applicable)
Buttons for user call to action
- HTML for embedding into event pages, ticket confirmation pages, and/or e-mail
- Buttons for different use cases (pre-purchase, post-purchase, RSVP, etc.)
Sociable Content Distribution Network
Enabling your users to communicate with their friends on Facebook about an event is only the first part of the Sociable solution. While there are other services that will enable sharing of content on Facebook, our solution is unique because we index every event and associate it with a Facebook user ID. This makes it possible to re-surface the event content to the user's friends at different points in time leading up to the event. The net result is that we increase the number of impressions of your event content thereby driving increased clicks and incremental ticket sales. Here are the different ways we distribute your event content:
- Facebook communication channels (users publish to the "Wall", newsfeeds, and send notifications)
- Inclusion in the Sociable consumer application
- Inclusion in Facebook applications with complementary content (e.g. calendar applications, music discovery, fan services, etc.)
- Social ad units run on general Facebook applications
- Facebook advertising units
- Inclusion in Sociable Partner sites via widgets, leveraging the combined traffic from partner sites like LiveNation, RazorGator, and more
User flow with screenshots
When a user on your site has clicked on a Sociable button to share their interest in an event on Facebook, the user is delivered to a new browser window (or tab) hosted by Sociable. This page is where the user will authenticate their Facebook credentials and approve publishing of content to Facebook. Once published, the user's Facebook friends will view this content and click on the links delivering them to your site (or a site you designate, such as a ticketing page). Below are example screenshots of the three major pieces of the interaction flow: call to action on your site, content publishing via Sociable, and content posted on Facebook.
  |
Add Sociable buttons to create the user call to action |
 |
User takes the following actions to publish content |
 |
Content is posted in several places on Facebook |
Benefits
Increased ticket sales. Sociable drives incremental ticket sales for partners by tapping into the power of social proofing. When users share their interest in an event with their friends on Facebook, it creates a recommendation that drives higher sales conversion rates. Our partners have seen sales conversions rates 3X to 6X greater than other traffic sources. Because user content created via the Sociable service is monetizing at such a high rate, Sociable is able to distribute that content to drive the highest number of impressions possible.
Increased exposure for events. While the ultimate measure of success is increased ticket sales (or conversions), Sociable also drives event exposure through users viewing event content and starting conversations around those events. The average feed story is distributed to 150 friends, nearly half of whom log in once per day to read their newsfeed. Sociable also distributes content across its partner network (event sites, Facebook applications, Facebook Connect widgets) to drive further exposure.
Lowest cost solution. Sociable gets paid only when we drive ticket sales on behalf of our partners. Our preferred partners pay standard affiliate marketing commissions for any ticket sales driven through our service and distribution network. Partners may utilize the service for free during the beta period.
Better user experience for consumers. Sociable aggregates content around a user's friends offline social activities, creating one central hub where a user can find relevant, highly personalized event content. This creates a better user experience, as any individual event or ticketing site cannot generate enough user content to create a compelling consumer application. By aggregating content from a network of event sites, Sociable provides the user with a content-rich experience.
Product roadmap designed to serve event sites only. Sociable is the only content sharing service designed specifically for event sites. While several other services exist to help users share general content on Facebook (and other social sites), Sociable is the only one that addresses the need for indexing user content based on time and geographic location. When users interact with the Sociable service, Sociable stores the Facebook user ID, friend IDs, and event details - enabling intelligent content targeting and distribution. Thus, while other services are built for simple sharing, Sociable was designed with re-distribution and re-use of event content in mind. Sociable is constantly looking for new ways to share and distribute event content.