Social Media is very sensitive and can be equated to a magnifying glass on everything good or bad about you. If you followed the 2008 presidential race, you know how critical Social Media was of the presidential candidates as well as Palin. In light of the tragic events in Arizona, the public scrutiny on Sarah Palin through Social Media have hit an all time high.

I’ll dissect the Social Media backlash against Palin as it’s one of the best long term examples of what not to do and how an Internet Marketing firm can handle the damage. This post isn’t an issue of political affiliation but rather to understand the monumental effects of Social Media – for better or for worse.

Statements Accessible Anytime

One of the most powerful things about the Internet is the archival of data. Every Tweet, every email, every status update and every comment is most likely saved in one form or another. Even content you published on a blog but took down can be resurrected to promote a political agenda or hold someone accountable. The key thing is realizing what context your content will be placed in the future.

The publicized cross hairs map by Palin.

The above image, published months ago by Sarah Palin came under heavy scrutiny following the shooting in Tuscon, Arizona that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the hospital and 6 others dead. While Palin couldn’t have foreseen someone shooting Giffords (which was loosely implied on the image), the backlash is phenomenal as the image and her comments are now put in to a new context following the attack. Afters new broke of the shooting, the site that hosted the image, Take Back The 20 was taken down immediately.

The site’s removal didn’t stop journalists, bloggers and other from digging up cached copies of the images and references on Palin’s Twitter profile and Facebook page encouraging voters to “reload.”

While the two combined don’t directly encourage violence, the media has placed some blame on Palin for promoting a negative message. The Washing Independent has more information on the quote

Dissecting The Backlash

Social Media amplifies what you say. It’s the first channel many consumers turn to when they voice their problems with large companies or even other people. The events that unfolded in Arizona had many people express their anger for Palin’s political rhetoirc. Some felt Palin was responsible for promoting violence against a US Representative and should be held accountable. Others argued that blaming Palin for the shooting was irresponsible and borderline hypocritical.

Both points of view were given a voice through Social Media. A very loud one at that.

The debate came to Palin’s Facebook page where moderators quickly deleted any negative comments against her. Does Sarah Palin have the right to delete negative comments on her Facebook Page? Yes – it’s an advantage afforded to us when using Social Media but can be equated to a double edged sword. Deleting a comment if it’s spam or promoting hate speech is the right thing to do but you hit a grey area when it comes to a debate. Even though Facebook’s Terms Of Use allows Palin to moderate the conversation on her Facebook page, the side effect is more backlash.

The comment scrubbing that took place on Palin’s Facebook page is comparable to the Streisand effect. The effect, as applied to the comment moderation going on is best summed up by John Gilmore: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

What can this teach us about Social Media and how to deal with a backlash of this magnitude?

Crisis Prevention – Preventing Revolts Before They Happen

The best way to deal with a Social Media crisis is to prevent it before it even begins. When creating content or starting conversations, ask yourself “how will this be interpreted in the future?” Content shared through Social Media isn’t easily forgotten. You’ve seen the ramifications Palin has to face for comments she made almost a year ago, time isn’t an issue when troves of data are not only saved but shared through Social Media.

But what do you when you’re facing a crisis? The best thing to do is own up to it. Social Media forces everyone to be held accountable for their actions. While you may not get enough kudos to cancel out the negative press against you, your image online will fare a lot better. Social Media retains a human element of the conversation and with instant access to information, it’s very easy to prove a point and have the facts back it up. Shying away from that shows people you’re trying to avoid debate and responsibility for your actions. You can’t censor the conversation.

What could Palin have done differently from a Social Media standpoint? She could have left the comments on her Facebook page and invited everyone to an open discussion addressing each individual concern in a blog post. Palin could have taken responsibility and acknowledged the potential message being sent by her Tweets, Facebook status updates and the now offline site that hosted the crosshairs image.

Palin’s actions to scrub the net of any trace she left has only generated a greater outcry against her actions. While the ratio of positive to negative press would still vary dramatically, her image wouldn’t suffer as badly. Instead, we’ll most likely see her most recent actions referenced, even more so when she runs for a political office.

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Twitter’s message interface is extremely simple and condenses messaging to its simplest form. Its 140-character limit forces you to say what you really need to say, instead of dressing up your words. Messaging on Twitter is fast and the spam filtering system that has been put in place works very efficiently. If you’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of emails you receive, Twitter will reduce the amount of noise surrounding your most important messages— you will no longer be bombarded with paragraphs of text in your emails. Twitter is the email killer.

Twitter’s Message Interface

Twitter’s simplistic interface is very attractive as it reflects the short messaging system’s straight to the point approach to communication. You can message users one of two ways— through a public reply or private message. Both can be done wherever you are in Twitter. Type @username and your message is a reply part of a public conversation. Typing DM @username is a private message and is only seen between you and the recipient. Both allow you to insert links in your messages and are subject to the 140-character limit of Twitter. The only downside to direct messages on Twitter is that the person you want to communicate with must be following you, and vice versa.

Make a List

Twitter’s Lists allow you to organize your co-workers, friends and fans into a very easy to manage groups
that give you a bird’s eye view of who’s who and an easy way to contact them.

Twitter’s Lists Organizes Your Colleagues and Friends

Making a list is extremely easy to do and is very handy for managing however many followers you have. Twitter lists can be made public or private. If it’s your coworkers, I suggest making the list public in order to help promote your company and create a personal bond between clients; just make sure to respect your co-worker’s wishes if they don’t want to be on a public list. Mashable has a complete break down of how Twitter lists work and
how to better utilize them.

Spam Filtering

One of the biggest complaints about email is spam – Twitter’s method of filtering is very efficient and easy. If there is a user you don’t want following you, block them or make your profile private. These
two tools combined make it extremely difficult for spam to reach you.

If for whatever reason spam does reach you, you can instantly report the offending Tweet or user. The second
you report a user for spamming you, they can no longer message or follow you. This is fundamentally different from email, which relies on rules to restrict the flow of mail form a sender and direct it to a junk folder: Twitter makes it impossible for that user to message you again.

Twitter is great everywhere email is weak and then some. Spam filtering is extremely easy to manage. Shorter messages reduce communication down to its most basic form to get the point across faster. Twitter also makes it easy to interact and engage in conversations with the people you really want to
talk to.

We think Twitter is an email killer. Will you be using Twitter to simplify your messaging system?

Do you think Twitter isn’t robust enough to replace your inbox? Talk to us on Facebook or even send us a reply on Twitter!

This list takes a look at the top 5 SEO and Social Media experts on Twitter and their Blogs. You’ll find insight on anything from keywords to interacting on Facebook to creating more followers on Twitter.

The Top Social Media & SEO Blogs To Read

1. Copy Blogger is a great source of inspiration for writers everywhere. Billed as the go to source for fresh knowledge and an expert in writing compelling content, Copy Blogger is one of the best Blogs on this list.

2. Soshable delves in to the realm of human interaction online through social media. The Blog features posts from guest writers to compile the best content from notable experts such as Erin Ryan and J.D. Rucker.

3. Quick Sprout is run by Neil Patel, a young, knowledgeable entrepreneur who details his experience with SEO, Blogging and start ups.

4. SEO Steve is an extremely well-versed SEO expert from Orange County who can create results as fast as he can Tweet. His SEO tips are top notch and his blog is a great resource for any SEO expert or wannabe.

5. Mashable is one of the best Social Media Blogs. There is always something new and fresh for anyone interested in Social Media. Mashable is a great source of inspiration when you want to find what’s going on in the world of Social Media.

The Top SEO Twitter Profiles To Follow

6. SEO Rock Stars is a great Twitter profile to follow for SEO advice and insights.

7. Andy Beal posts advice for managing your reputation online and is CEO of trackur.com.

8. Pro Blogger which is run by Darren Rowse, details his experience as a full-time Blogger. Rowse made a name for himself by becoming one of the few people who could make a living purely from Blogging. He often posts insights in to freelance Blogging to help other accomplish the same goal.

9. Kevin Rose is the founder of Digg.com and an entrepreneur based in San Francisco. While Kevin is known for his work at Digg, he invests in small startups which he discusses on Twitter combined with his witty remarks about social media.

10. Tech Crunch is run by Mike Arrington and features breaking technology news in Silicon Valley. Tech Crunch is notable for its insight in to business deals of Social Media companies before they go public.

Foursquare, The Check-in Service

Foursquare is a location-based (sometimes referred to as ‘geo-location’) service that allows users to ‘check in’ to any venue while earning points, badges and the title of a venue’s “mayor” (someone who has checked in the most into a single venue over the past two months). The check-in service creates a competitive environment to explore new locales and share them with friends through its built-in social network.

Analytics

Foursquare provides access to powerful analytics. After going through the “Claim a Venue” process to confirm your business information (which has the tendency to be a bit convoluted despite Foursquare’s attempt to simplify this process), a venue owner can view their customer demographics such as age, gender and time of visit to the venue.

In-bound Marketing

Foursquare extends deal and specials. Coupons that have been distributed by outbound marketing means in the past—television, radio, newspapers, mail—are instead seen in real-time by Foursquare users within a venue’s immediate area. This is free advertising that people are actively seeking out. For example, Chili’s offers a free order of chips and salsa for any table that checks into the restaurant on Foursquare. The possibilities are limitless and the promotions welcomed. What are you willing to offer to get customers into your venue?

Linking to Other Social Networks

Foursquare users can choose to link their Foursquare account to their Facebook and Twitter profiles and Foursquare provides this information in the Analytics page, paving the way for targeted marketing.

Twitter, The Real-Time Network

Twitter extends your restaurant’s presence online by giving your establishment a voice that is often lost in direct advertising. A brand personality leads to improved customer engagement and paves the way for new followers.

Twitter is the best tool for sending quick updates to your venue’s community. Some updates can include new menu items, coupons and happy hour reminders. Your Twitter network receives your announcement instantly, can reply to what you say and retweet it to their entire Twitter network to reach an even larger audience.

Facebook, The Friend Communicator

If Twitter is the de facto micro-update network then Facebook is the be-all and end-all friend network. Its market penetration of 500 million users is the largest of any social network.

FBML (Facebook Mark-Up Language)

Facebook makes it easy for businesses, like your restaurant, to be a part of the Facebook community. Your restaurant can integrate HTML into your Facebook Page by adding the Static FBML application. This enables you to design and program a fully-functioning landing page within your restaurant’s Facebook Page. What should you put on your FBML page? The possibilities are endless.

Customer Service With Facebook

Social media acts as an open channel to provide stellar customer service by directly engaging with your customer base. Seek out your customers and inquire about their visit to your venue. Was the restaurant clean? Were the employees friendly? What did your customer order and would they order it again? If positive, thank them for their feedback and invite them to come back soon. If negative, apologize and thank them for the feedback. Tell the customer you will rectify the situation to make sure it never happens again. Your customers will be shocked (in a good way) at the intimate outreach and impressed that you’re listening. The ability to engage and learn from your customer is the key to building loyalty to your brand and learning how to improve your business.

Syndication

Like Twitter, Facebook also includes an instant update feature. If Facebook can do what Twitter does, why would anyone need a presence on both networks? The answer: not everyone has both a Twitter and Facebook account. While some do, some of your customers won’t. Each network functions differently with advantages and disadvatanges to both. Having a presence on both networks gives your restaurant guarantees a higher brand visibility than if you only choose one.

Local Search: The Review Guide For Customers

Word-Of-Mouth is a Powerful Thing

Customers trust unbiased sources. Google and Yelp provide local search tools for people to use when looking for local attractions, but they’re more than just an online version of the Yellow Pages. Aside from aggregating local data, the greatest thing about these services is the ability to write Reviews. Feedback from your customers is readily available for you and viewable to anyone who searches for your restaurant. Business owners are then able to e-mail their reviewers directly—again, proactively engaging your customers (see the recurring theme?).

Local Search Now As Mobile Apps

Many local search tools are available as Mobile Apps making it easy for anyone to find your restaurant when they’re out and about. This is where keeping your venue’s information updated comes in handy. Anyone searching for a restaurant will be more inclined to pick a venue that not only caters to their taste but also offers accurate information, including your address, phone number, website and business hours. Yelp also enables information on the price range of your menu, whether or not your establishment is good for kids, if you offer delivery service and more.

LinkedIn, The Industry Professional Connector

Professional Networking

LinkedIn shares many of the features you can find on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare: status updates, social networking, messaging and check-in tools. LinkedIn takes these concepts and applies them to professional networking. While you may be able to reach most of your customers through other social networks, LinkedIn is the only network that gives you access to a large number of professionals in your industry. This will be useful when you want to promote your business, offer catering for corporate events, gain advice from long time food aficionados or acquire knowledge to help your business.

Case Study: Golden Spoon

To illustrate the power of social media, here’s a look into the social media marketing efforts of Golden Spoon in Coachella Valley. I have helped manage the social interactions for Golden Spoon across the networks I have mentioned. Golden Spoon’s results clearly show that social media marketing is an effective way to create buzz, improve customer service, encourage store visits and gather invaluable demographics information.

Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter Cross-Integration

These three networks integrate ever-so nicely and create one of the best customer interaction tools on a localized scale.

Our scenario: a customer checks in on Foursquare to one of the Golden Spoon locations in the Coachella Valley. Foursquare allows me to track who checked in, at what time of day, and their Twitter or Facebook accounts if linked to their Foursquare profile. I then contact them using Golden Spoon’s Facebook or Twitter accounts to ask, “How was your frozen yogurt?” or “Did you try our newest flavor?” or “Did you see our Foursquare specials? We have free frozen yogurt for the Mayor!” Each reply generated a response coupled with feedback for Golden Spoon. I then add the customer to the Golden Spoon Twitter and Facebook accounts if they aren’t already a follower or fan. (Social Consolidation, oh my!)

Mobile Fan Club

While Golden Spoon’s Coachella Valley locations are promoted through the standard social media channels, customers can still receive updates about promotions through a mobile fan club which sends out text updates. The execution is simple and compliments the social channels already in use. The owner of these venues shares just how effective mobile messaging can be: “I’ve been in my store in the middle of the day when it’s absolutely dead. I’ll send a message to my mobile fan club saying, ‘Come into the store in the next hour for a buy one get one free frozen yogurt!’ The store will fill up in 20 minutes.”

Foursquare Analytics And Promotions

Here is a look into Foursquare’s analytics. These stats show who checked in, when, their age to and their most recent check-ins. What makes this really powerful is that you can interact with every single person who checked in to your restaurant if you’re using Foursquare.

Facebook And Twitter Engagement

In conjunction with Foursquare, Golden Spoon has utilized Twitter and Facebook to announce its promotions. We often give a short description of a deal and link back to the blog to provide detailed information. The important thing to remember is to include enough information in the Tweet for people to understand the offer without having to go to the blog (Tweets are limited to 140 characters). The post is only meant to elaborate on it; however, you may find it suitable to not include a Blog link at all, depending on the offer.

We also asked Facebook fans and Twitter followers their opinion on Golden Spoon’s flavors and their experience in the stores. However, we were careful not to make every status about Golden Spoon, or else fans and followers would think of our social media efforts as spam. We varied our posts with general questions to promote conversation and build a community. “How is Coachella Valley doing today? How are you going to beat the heat?” This is still relevant to Golden Spoon (eating frozen yogurt when it’s hot helps you cool down) but doesn’t hit you over the head with a self-promoting tone.

Now you have learned what Social Media is and how it can be used to increase business for your restaurant and how I’ve used it to increase interest. If you aren’t using Social Media for your restaurant, why are you waiting? You’ve learned about the tools, understood the process and read the results. Social Media will increase interest and traffic; there is no reason to wait any longer to engage online.

Create A Social Media Battle Plan!

Often times people dive in to Social Media without a clue on what to do. While using Social Media is great for personal use, if you’re leveraging it on a professional scale, you’ll want to create a game plan. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish, how you want to engage users and whether or not your target demographic can be reached easily online. These are all very important things to keep in mind when creating your Social Media battle plan. You wouldn’t create a start up without a product, why would you create your online identity without a face?

Be Social On Your Media Channels

The number one mistake brands and businesses makes is taking the wrong approach to Social Media by not being active. The whole point of Social Media is to actively engage your users and create a community. Unfortunately people are alienated from larger companies even on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

You need to be a participant in your own community otherwise people will feel alienated. The biggest advantage of Social Media is that you are able to connect with real people and get real responses instantly. Everyone dreams of doing something like this for their business but quickly ruin the opportunity when they use it without knowing what to do. Don’t make this mistake, create a Social Media battle plan.

Hire Someone Who Knows Social Networking

If you don’t know anything about Social Media, you would benefit from hiring someone who can actively monitor your online presence. Similar to a PR representative, they would monitor your social media activity. You can try it at home or you can let a professional handle it. The key thing to stress here, and ties in to my original point, you’ll need a Social Media battle plan and someone who can implement it.

If you’re just starting in the Social Media world make sure your demographic is targeted, engaged and in constant interaction. Those points will help jumpstart your Social Media strategy.

The Social Network

The Social Network, a movie directed by David Fincher on Facebook’s early years is slated to hit theaters October 1st. The film is an adaptation of the book The Accidental Billionaires written by Ben Mezrich about Mark Zuckerberg’s claim to fame as the Founder of Facebook. It was also announced Trent Reznor, one of the leading musicians in the Social Media space would be doing the movie’s score. It was announced today, a free five song sampler would be released in anticipation of the album’s release.

Free five song sample from NIN

Golden Spoon Website relaunch, Facebook Fan Club

We are also proud to announce the relaunch of Golden Spoon Coachella Valley’s website which Digital Eye helped program. Our in house web developer, Kanate coded the new site. Digital Eye’s graphic designers, Jamie and Walter helped create the site’s new graphics and media for the corresponding Facebook Page.

Golden Spoon Coachella Valley’s Facebook Page now features a Fan Club which includes development work from Jamie, Kanate and Walter.

Who To Follow

At Digital Eye, we follow and interact with a lot of great people who offer excellent insight in to the industry. Here’s a list of who you should be following

Digital Eye Staff & Friends

@digitaleyemedia is our staff Twitter feed and features posts from the Blog and is another medium for contacting us. The Twitter feed is maintained by Jamie and contains great links about Social Media.

@KanateU is Digital Eye’s kick ass web designer and specializes in HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript/JQuery, Flash/ActionScript, PHP, SQL, JSP, Java Servlet, J2EE, C, C++, and Perl.

@budor is maintained by Gary Brewer, our president. Gary posts his thoughts and experience with social media and marketing online.

@tannergodarzi As Digital Eye’s in-house Blogger, I’m in charge of creating original content and maintaining Social channels.

@seosteve has great advice and insight to improve search engine ranking and boost your web traffic.

@kipknight is highly experienced in brand management and specializes in marketing.

@zaibatsu is an extremely knowledgeable Social Media guru who is best known for his high quality submissions on Digg and Reddit.

Vadim Lavrusik of Mashable wrote a great post on the future of Social Media in journalism. A lot of the points he touched on are current trends that are evolving in Social Media.

New And Old Media

Many of Social Media’s biggest proponents are Old Media’s largest detractors. While Old Media has slowly embraced the social outlets that we’ve been using for ages, I believe the two will coexist in some way; neither will totally cannibalize the other but rather work hand in hand. The ultimate goal for the news is to deliver timely content in an orderly fashion. Whether a news outlet such as CNN or Twitter uses traditional media to deliver a breaking story, old and new media need to be considered as two very viable platforms with two different approaches. CNN has taken some great steps in complimenting its old school reporting with real time feedback. A story could develop through an Old Media outlet and be expanded upon using real time reporting via Twitter and Facebook.

Accountability In Journalism

One of the best and worst things Social Media has done is amplify the Streisand effect and keep people in check through increasing transparency. Sites such as Wikileaks (which leaks documents through anonymous sources otherwise unavailable) and Facebook (which aims to put your entire life within millions of eye balls – for better or worse) will be a few of the vital tools journalists and readers will use to keep each other in check. With Social Media I have access to so many outlets for any one individual and vice versa, sites like Twitter almost become an automatic peer review machine.

We’ve seen time and time again factual errors being disputed, executive’s bad habits come to light and even empower an entire presidential campaign. I think this trend will continue as fact and integrity checking become even more widespread as the tools we use to do so become not only easier, but reacher greater audiences.

Company Interaction

Before the advent of Social Media, companies didn’t have channels to directly reach consumers. Often times it was the other way around as consumers had to go through an ardous process to connect to a company or brand on some level. Today, brands and companies are competing to connect to you. I’m not talking about ads or marketing (that might be an in/direct result of social media) but rather a brand connecting to you through a social channel like Facebook. This creates a more intimate relation between consumers, journalists and brands. It almost removes the smoke and mirrors of a corporate machine and puts a face to brands, or rather a Facebook profile picture.

This will definitely continue, companies and brand see Social Media as the next big thing and whether they want to market something to you or connect on some scale, they will compete harder and harder to do so.

The Move To Mobile

Mobile Devices have evolved at such a dramatic pace in the past four years. Smartphones were often cumbersome and target the business professional who wanted to take his work home with him. Today, we have great platforms like Android and iOS which have jumpstarted smartphones and have killed the preconceived notion that a device with push email would only be useful for a man in a suit. The side effect of this fast paced development is continued integration with Social Media.

Location aware mobile devices spew information about our surroundings and constant connections to the cloud allows us to keep in sync with our personal lives. I think we’ll see an explosion of Socially connected devices that will allow journalists and writer to do live reporting without the need to lug around tons of equipment, receive updates on stories and revise at anywhere, anytime and of course discover new, excited and localized content.

The future for Social Media is bright and we’ll see its continual use by writers, journalists and Bloggers evolve. I think in the coming years we’ll see new tools to better discover content generated by users and that fact/integrity checking will only become more streamlined.

Via: Mashable

Tweetdeck

iTunes Link

Tweetdeck is one of the best Twitter clients for the iPad. It brings the full experience of the desktop App and syncs with the accompanying iPhone App. Tweetdeck still maintains the clean interface many have come to love when using the App; it transitions extremely well on to the iPad and accommodates either portrait or landscape modes with ease.

Tweetdeck gives you a plethora of options when it comes to Tweeting. The interface allows you to Geotag your Tweet (taking advantage of either the GPS or Wi-Fi connection in the iPad), insert links and pictures and give you easy access to Twitter users you’ve replied to recently. One of Tweetdecks highlights is its support for multiple Twitter accounts. Scrolling through columns and browsing through replies is one of the main reasons I really like Tweetdeck for the iPad. It allows me to stay in touch with everyone I’ve interacted with across the Twitter-sphere. It’s clean and elegant interface really compliment the iPad.

Instapaper

iTunes Link

Instapaper is a great utility for Bloggers. We all come across the need to save content for future reading and Instapaper fills that need. It’s a simple App that works in conduction with the web site to save content and import it to read at a later date. Content is automatically downloaded as soon as you bookmark something using either the desktop App or bookmarklet in your browser.

Instapaper’s UI puts the focus on your material by bringing it up front and center; you can alternate between light and dark backgrounds for reading and adjust tex size or the font No matter what you bookmark, only the content you want to see will be shown.

I like Instapaper for its function. The ability to save content and revisit it when I’m ready to write about it helps my Blogging workflow greatly. I’ll often come across new items that I don’t need to act on right now but will need to later on. Instapaper for the iPad compliments any Blogger or writer’s content gathering workflow

Evernote

iTunes Link

I like using Evernote as my project HQ; ideas I need for projects I’m not working on, potential designs and whatnot often go here. Evernote for the iPad will likely be the epicenter for all your creative potential like it is for me.

It’s incredibly easy to sort and search your notes by criteria or tags. Notes, clippings and what not can be easily sorted. If you tag your content using the GPS, it can be plotted on a map in case you have something location specific or want to know where most of your creativity activity takes place.
Audio and pictures can be easily inserted in to any note which truly makes Evernote your creation HQ.

Evernote will help any Blogger during the content creation process. Ideas can be quickly jotted down and expanded upon then synced to your commuter or iPhone. I’ve used it for massive projects spanning dozens of Blog posts related to one topic or helping draft chapters for a small book. Evernote works and it’s available on the iPad.

WordPress

iTunes Link

The final App, and one I’m most excited to talk about is WordPress for the iPad. I cut my Blogging teeth on the iPhone and have loved using WP’s iPhone App. When an iPad version was released, I was ecstatic to start writing and for good reason; the App is one of the best Blogging tools for the iPad. If you’re using those other content management systems, this iOS App may sway you.

Our blog at Digital Eye runs on WordPress and I’ve written this entire post using the App. It’s multi-pane interface creates a straight forward experience; you select which Blog you want to write for, in my case the Digital Eye Blog and I can create a new post. When creating or editing a new post, I can insert a photo or load a quick preview of my work. One of the biggest advantages of using a native App versus accessing the web interface is the ability to cache your content. The iPad has the tendency to flush its cache of pages in Safari; this could destroy all of your work in WordPress if you don’t save.

If WordPress if your CMS of choice, this App should be one of the first installed on your iPad.

If you’re worried about your fingers becoming sore from the device’s on screen keyboard, you’ll be happy to know that it doesn’t put too much strain on your fingers. You’ll become well adjust to the iPad’s predictive text features and it’s different keyboard orientations. I referee the landscape orientation but I’ well acquainted with its portrait orientation mode. If you’re a Blogger trying to work an iPad in to your workflow, let us know how you’re doing it and what Apps you’re using.

This is a continuation from 10-Point Social Media Strategy For Bands To Interact Online – Part 1. Part 2 focuses on measuring analytics and your band’s influence online.

6. Band Metrics To Measure Content Playback

People love stats. It’s what pays the bills, provides genuine feedback and gives a sampling to create new content from. Band Metrics accomplishes this goal and more by giving musicians the ability to measure the success of their music online.

Sample output of Band Metrics stats which pulls in data from sites such as Last.fm, Reverb Nation, Imeem and Myspace.

According to Band Metrics, the Software is “a machine learning framework with natural language processing.” This gives musicians trend measurements, sentiment analysis and reputation management, pulling in information from all over the Internet with statistics on how well your content is doing online. Band Metrics effectively replaces the top song charts we’ve become long accustomed to in the analog world. The advantage? It pulls in stats from wherever your music is available.

7. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a valuable tool that tracks search terms and mentions across the Internet. How bands can leverage this tool online? Track mentions of your band name, individual members across the blogosphere for interviews, reviews about your music and videos and so on.

All of this is vital to gauge negative feedback and go into “disaster control” mode or reply to positive feedback generated by users writing about you.

8. Social Mention

Social Mention is a very powerful tool that offers real-time Social Media searches. By searching for your band name or similarly related criteria, you’ll receive search results from all avenues of Social Media. You’ll see results from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and be able to interact with that data.

Social Mention offers detailed analytics such as sentiment, strength, passion and reach. “Sentiment” gauges positive/negative feedback of the content. “Strength” is the likelihood of your brand being mentioned in social media. “Passion” is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly and “reach” is the measure of influence. In addition, you can view top hashtags, top users posting content, keywords and sources.

9. Twitter

Twitter will be one of the most important tools you’ll use to not only promote your band through Social Media channels but for measuring your band’s influence. A lot of tools will give you a measure of who’s interested in your band across the micro-blogging network but there are some ways you can measure organic feedback. Two of these being the reply function and hashtags, the building blocks for Twitter analytics.

If you’re looking to promote a new release, you may tag specific Tweets with the album’s name. Your sample Tweet would look something like “Our new release #newalbumname is coming 09/15 which includes a digital download in a variety of formats. bit.ly/albumname” The great thing about having a hashtag in your Tweet is the potential to start a trending topic on Twitter. If enough people Tweet that hashtag, it will show up as a trending topic on Twitter which gives it the potential to reach a larger audience beyond your loyal Twitter followers. The other advantage is the analytic potential a service like hashtags.org offers. By searching for your band name, release names or any other information associated with your band “song names, quotes, etc.” you’ll see a list of Tweets featuring those hashtags.

Disclaimer: I am not a Justin Bieber fan, but a significant portion of Twitter is.

A sample search for “Justin Bieber” shows Tweets that contain “#justinbieber,” “#justin” and “#bieber” which gives you an accurate sampling of Twitter’s preference to pop music. You’ll be able to see what kinds of Tweets your fans are sending out, when mentions of this particular hashtag came up on Twitter and a graph displaying results for that hashtag over a period of time. If you were Justin Bieber, you’d probably be gloating about your Twitter influence.

Nor am I a Lady Gaga fan, but a significant portion of Twitter is.

A sample search for Lady Gaga’s first album “The Fame” shows feedback about the album and important news that it was recently diamond certified worldwide with over 10 million sales. It’s an important milestone for the pop singer and a great example of Twitter analytics in action: fans are excited about the album’s diamond certification and are spreading the news via Twitter.

A similar service, Trendistic, functions much the same way as hashtags.org but expands its scope beyond hashtags. Searching for an artist, album or song name brings up any Tweet mentioning that search criteria.

Twitter still likes Justin Bieber

10. Facebook

Facebook is quickly becoming the number one social network for people of all kinds including celebrities, brands, bands (that’s you) and your normal everyday user. I detailed in part 1 why you should set up a Facebook page to update your fans on upcoming releases, concert dates and other important information. Now it’s time to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook page and to put ‘likes’ and friend requests into hard numbers.

Facebook has developed a tool that gives you access analytics and fan interactions called Insights. Insights generates a graph that shows detailed user interaction. A post on Facebook’s developer Blog details the advantages of Insights:

Websites: Fully-integrated sites and those that use social plug-ins, or add a non-integrated domain in one easy step.
Applications: Including canvas, mobile, device, and desktop applications.
Facebook Pages: Including Pages created on Facebook.com and those that are part of the Open Graph protocol.

Out of all the data visualization and analytics Apps mentioned above, Facebook’s offerings are the most robust and data rich. If you’re measuring fan interaction through the site, Facebook’s tools are definitely user friendly and will generate a lot of valuable information.

This concludes my 2 part special on how bands can not only leverage Social Media to promote themselves online, but measure feedback from fans; two very vital components working hand in hand to augment offline channels such as the radio, word of mouth and analog advertising.

Social Media is quickly evolving and takes on many different forms when bands and artists use it to interact with fans. It ranges from being an art medium to a communication medium to a distribution medium. All of these aspects have been touched upon by bands/artists and have been shown to be valid components to advertising and other traditional methods a record label may have used to promote a band. Hopefully I’ve removed any preconceived notions you have regarding the difficulty of using Social Media for your band and have encouraged you to take the next step in getting your music out to the vast amount of social networks waiting to listen.

This is the transcript from an audio interview that took place August 31, 2010.

What is Digg to you?

Digg is always in my eyes. I’ve always enjoyed Digg as a news aggregator. At first that was my appeal. I came to it as a website where I could see content and breaking news stories; it was a little daily newspaper for me. The whole thing, after I got banned and even more changes, I didn’t want to contribute to the site and I was moving around millions of pages views per month. I thought “Why try to get back on and give them the good press?” Maybe it’s a little arrogant, but I really did feel that I was giving them some free love, so why try to get my account back on? I didn’t have the same kind of passion as before. That’s why I moved to Mixx and ultimately  Twitter looking for a site—not only for great news but somewhere that’s fun and has a different dynamic and different social media feel. Because social media is fun for me.

How do you view Twitter in regards to Digg?

The news breaks faster on Twitter than anywhere else. You’ll see correspondents from CNN to any Blogger for any company out there looking toward Twitter to find out what’s happening in the world. You’ll have someone posting a car bombing that recently happened and you’ll see it instantly on Twitter, then it’s broadcast and amplified and, then the big media sources are right on it saying “breaking from Twitter.” That’s why I say Twitter is actually breaking news faster.

Do you think Twitter could overtake Digg or will they remain coexisting?

Digg is your daily newspaper and its goal is to pick the best stories. Breaking news that is 4 hours old isn’t considered “breaking” anymore on Digg. Sites like Facebook and Twitter try to incorporate real time feedback; that has been going on for a while now. They’re two different animals and Digg is trying to incorporate the best features just like Facebook is from Twitter.

What do you think of the new Digg redesign and the user revolt? We’ve seen it happen with every major revision of the site, but what makes it different than previous Digg redesigns and user revolts?

I haven’t been on Digg. I wasn’t visiting it everyday looking for top news stories or even looking for a feel of the front page. What I would go there for is the upcoming stories; and the majority of that was coming up from friends. That was really enjoyable because I would see Andy Sorcini (MrBabyMan), Muhammad Saleem and other people and I knew. It’s in upcoming and it’s only been popular for 8 hours, it’s still breaking news and that’s where I find a lot of the Digg breaking news. Even if those stories don’t make it to the front page, I know they picked some good content. What happened with the new Digg redesign is they let in the big fire hose—CNN and Mashable, specifically. I love Mashable and I love their content but they were able to push Digg to pull in every single story that they’re throwing out there. It’s like a zillion followers here and a zillion followers there; they’re pulling that content in and people are voting that up rather than going to Andy with his 20,000 followers because Mashable is a big brand name and they’re being pushed on to the front page. I think that was the complaint many of old time and new users (like top Diggers and non-top Diggers) had. Now all these big guys are able to force feed and push their content to the front page of Digg. At least before it was fair up to a point with the Digg algorithm picking and choosing the content that is coming from not only top submitters but then lowly, normal submitters.

New Digg

Old Digg

With the “big fire hoses” overtaking Digg, do you think it is redundant to see a story from Mashable and then go to the Mashable website?

It doesn’t really make it redundant, but here is where the problem lies and I think I have a better handle on it. If you talk to Muhammad Saleem and J.D. Rucker, they might have a better feel and better answer. If you’re a normal user on Digg and you see that Apple is having a special event September 1st, you’re more apt to click that than little Johnnie who submitted the story that came out an hour or even a day earlier. To address your question, again will it just make Digg a placeholder for these larger firms? In fact, that was the problem. Mashable got on the front page. 4 or 5 posts were Mashable stories just a few days early on in the redesign. Just recently, Digg users revolted and so they hopped on board Reddit’s news feed and started promoting Reddit’s stories so every single top Reddit story was now on the front page of Digg. I guess users were trying to show Digg and the populace of users out there just how silly the redesign is, where you can actually force content from a competitor onto the front page because of the way they’re aggregating news.

Since users are revolting and promoting top Reddit stories on to the Reddit front page, do you think Digg is going to notice this and make changes?

Yes. Kevin is on top of it. I’ll tell you why: he doesn’t know I’m not a regular on my old show called “The Drill Down” where we could talk about Digg specifically and talk about Social Media in general. So when I told Kevin and other people “Hey I’m back on Digg” but I have a little fake account with my name, Kevin Rose welcomed me back. He also talked to J.D. Rucker and a few other people who mentioned him specifically about the new Digg redesign so he knows we’re influencers in Social Media. I think he was trying to nip some of the bad press. He’s being proactive. I don’t think he knows where all the fires are at right now, I don’t know if he’s not getting good feedback from his users or if he’s not listening to the end users. I think he is now—initially he wasn’t. I think they’re going to bring back a lot of the popular features that Digg had tossed out in the redesign, I just don’t know if they know how to properly address the problems that have arisen and have forced them down Alexa wise by a third when it comes to traffic volume.

Where do you see Digg going in the future? Whether it’s a revamp of V4 or a whole new system for version 5, and in the next few years in terms of redesigns and content distribution.

My comment to Kevin Rose: You want to listen to your popular users, the people that make your site what it is. I don’t care if you think a small percent of the top Digg users control the front page. I specifically said this to Kevin: “You don’t want to be a Blockbuster, you want to be a Netflix.” That means listening to your people.

With that said, the only way I think Digg can stay relevant is to push in or embrace the people they pushed out before. Top Diggers: these are people who are passionate about content; they have a great feel for it. Just like Twitter isn’t kicking out Lady Gaga because people like her, I really think Digg should do the same thing and give Andy some love and everyone else out there who has been passionate about their content. Obviously the users have spoken and made him number one on Digg and everyone who’s 2 all the way down to 2,000 should be getting some love because these are unpaid content/social media experts trying to submit the best content that they can find to Digg.com. If it’s spammy, other users will call them out. If you work for Time magazine, or you’re doing a social media promotion and say you’re a top Digger promoting it, the users will call you out. The Digg community forces you rise beyond mediocrity. But now with the revamp, they came in and said “Hey Mashable, Time, Newsweek, all you guys: we’ve got some good news! We’re going to get your content on the front page every day. We’re going to make it front and center, we’re going use your influence.”

They’re going to have to go back to their old business model to get breaking news on to the front page. At best they will have a 3-4 hour lag time. They have to move that up to 15 minutes to half an hour, which they haven’t been able to do. They just don’t know how to do that with the new Digg and they haven’t been able to do so.

So that’s the new Digg, all that matters is timeliness, control people and timing. News is dead. If you go to CNN.com and you already heard about a story on Digg, people are going to stop going back.