Social media is a constantly evolving space and now more than ever, its crucial to take advantage of interacting with fans and promoting your band. I’ll focus on how your band can measure its influence through social media and gauge interactions with fans.

This is a continuation from 10-Point Social Media Strategy For Bands To Interact Online – Part 1. Part two 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. Band Metrics pulls in information from all over the Internet to give you accurate 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 and the advantage it offers is 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 is to track mentions of their brand name, individual members across the blogosphere for interviews and reviews about their music and videos etc.

All of this is important to track so you can gauge negative feedback and go in 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 strength, passion, sentiment 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 promoting/posting content, keywords and sources.

9. Twitter

Twitter will be on 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 block 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 hash tag in your Tweet is the potential to start a trending topic on Twitter. If enough people Tweet that hash tag, 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 hash tags.

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 hash tag came up on Twitter and a graph displaying results for that hash tag over a period of time. If you were Justin Bieber, you’d probably be gloating about your Twitter influence.

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 hash tags. Searching for an artist, album or song name brings up any Tweet mentioning that search criteria.

10. Facebook

Facebook is quickly becoming the number on 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 in to 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 plugins, 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 I’ve talked about here, Facebook’s offerings are the most robust and data rich. If you’re measuring fan interaction through the site, Facebook’s tools are definitely very user friendly and will generate a lot of valuable information.

This concludes my two 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.

DigitalEYE had a chance to interview Zaibastu (Reg Saddler), a heavily influential social media expert who has over 100,000 followers on Twitter and has made a huge impact user news submitted sites such as Digg.  We discussed the new Digg redesign, user revolts and the future of Social Media concerning Digg and Twitter.

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.

I previously wrote about how bands were kicking ass at using social media and how your brand or business could take note of it—but what if you’re not an influential rock band and need to find your own social media strategy?

All of us strive for something when it comes to music, whether it’s performing for hundreds of thousands of fans at the year’s biggest festival or playing your heart out to a couple hundred die-hard fans in a small, overheated club in downtown L.A. For now, you’ve got your first album recorded, have your bandmates ready and a ton of gear to play your hearts out in your first gig to a few hundred people. First live performance. Nervous? You should be: you don’t even have a Twitter account yet!

1. Get Social And Interact

Engaging fans using social media is critical for any band; it’s the new MTV. Gone are the days when your band hopes to get play on the local music channel because YouTube is your new video outlet. Radio playback? Last.FM, Pandora, Facebook and word-of-mouth are all your promoters. That doesn’t mean the old school channels are obsolete; they’re just not as effective as they were a decade ago. Getting social will help promote your band through local channels as well as the national (or international) scene. The basics will be needed: Facebook music page, Myspace page (if you’re in to retro social networking), official band Twitter account, YouTube/Vimeo channel, SoundCloud/bandcamp profile, Flickr profile, iTunes/Amazon/Tune Core account (to distribute music) and of course, your very own official website. Sound daunting? Social media may come off as a huge undertaking but it’s more than worth it in the long run. To have a massive social presence, it would be wise to hire an ad agency or independent just to manage it all.

The more social media outlets your band connects to, the easier it is to engage fans and promote new work. It also creates a more intimate experience knowing anyone can send an @reply to get some sort of feedback. In the era of Prince, KISS and Van Halen, such a concept would seem ludicrous and would tear down the veil of mystery that enhanced their image. Today, social media outlets are tearing down the curtains and bringing artists off to the stage right in to the crowd. John Mayer, Pearl Jam, Cold Play, Taylor Swift and even Snoop Dogg have all taken up Twitter and often Tweet about random musings, concert info and music releases.

2. Interact With Your Community

So your band is on every social media outlet known to man and actively engaging fans. You can’t just stop at the occasional fan who leaves a comment on Facebook saying how great your latest single is. Bring them into your band’s community. Social Media should be the tool you use to bring in fans and potential fans to your band’s website. If you’re not sending out that .com or, worse, you don’t have one, this leaves fans sprawling for info across all these outlets you don’t own. If you’re lacking a site for your band, invest in a good website design company to code up something great. Twitter is awesome for sending out updates, Flickr for posting live shots, YouTube for hosting your next video but when your next release drops, are you going to inform everyone through a Facebook status? All of these social networks should tie in to your band’s main website and work together. Create a gallery of live concert shots that streams appropriately tagged content from Flickr; catalog music videos through embedded YouTube and Vimeo videos; add a media player courtesy of Sound Cloud or create a flash equivalent. These networks will bring in fans, allow them to interact with your content and spread it by word of mouth when they leave.

Your website should prominently display concert information and be the “go to” place for ticket info and other offers. When a band announces their new tour, misinformation can spread across blogs and other news outlets, rumored ticket prices often confuse customers. You’ll need to take control of how ticket information is disseminated before other outlets do. Same goes for media distribution. If you don’t have information on your newest release and Amazon is already showing a track listing complete with description while Pitchfork has a scathing review in the works, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Even if it’s leaked out piece by piece from any of your channels, your website needs to be the go to place for ANY information concerning media distribution. In short, if you created it and I can buy it, it needs to be acknowledged by you in some form. Amazon shouldn’t be the one giving me the only details.

Maintaining a blog adds additional content that goes far beyond what Facebook and Twitter can do. By having a central location that transcends the 140-500 character limit of Twitter and Facebook, you can get in to more details about any aspect of your music or band. Sending out a Tweet saying “New release – September 15th!” then linking it to a blog post with a full track list, release information, retail specials, digital download opportunities and recording information is the icing on your social media strategy. It is key for your website and social media outlets to interact hand-in-hand to bring in fans, engage with them and give them a reference for ANY information on your band. If you’re leaving discography info and a bio to Wikipedia or Facebook and not your website, this will create fragmentation of your band’s image. How Facebook sees you, how Twitter sees you, how Myspace sees you and how your website portrays you should be uniform.

3. Document And Archive Your Content

If your band has been around for a decade or is looking to stick it out in the long run, all of your content—whether it be photos, music, live shows, anything—needs to documented in some way. You can loosen the reigns and let fans have some control of this. This might sound contradictory to the hardline stance of taking command of every social media account you can get but this approach has worked. I mentioned in my previous post how Nine Inch Nails is innovating in the social media space and that they’ve been one to let fans have a significant place in their online presence, one of them being a fan run wiki dedicated to archiving the band’s concert dates, live recordings and information hard core fans would be interested in. The reason this works is that it’s maintained by truly passionate fans. The casual fan may not care about finding an obscure live recording or information on an ultra-rare release that only had 400 copies put out but there are people who do. These people will be dedicated to maintaining wikis and live recording catalogs online, they should be embraced as they are an essential part of shaping your band’s community. Other fan run sites should be credited in some way on your band’s website and receive some interaction on your end.

Bands such as The Grateful Dead (or simply “The Dead”) have garnered a massive following of fans that actively tape and distribute their live recordings online. While others have taken stricter stances on concert recordings, it’s still an area that needs to be acknowledged whether it’s shunned or embraced. Even if you ignore the taping community and try to instate restrictions, fans will always find a way to circumvent these bonds and sites that embrace the tradition of taping will flourish. While I can’t say which approach you should take in regards to this, you should at least do something about it. If you’re not willing to host or extensively catalog live material, at least let the fans take over in this area and assist when you can. Bands such as Metallica and Dave Matthews Band not only embrace live recordings, but monetize them through officially run websites that allow you to download any recorded performance in lossless form for the cost of an average CD.

4. Interact With Your Channels

You have your social media accounts set up, your website running and eager fans listening to your latest release. The next thing is to utilize your social channels. Fans are always looking for the latest information on their favorite bands; they’ll search through social channels and it’s very important to keep these organized and give them a definitive purpose. Keep all video content contained to one channel on YouTube/Vimeo and create playlists for music videos, interviews, fan interactions, teasers and trailers etc. Your Flickr account should be organized the same way; sets for live shots, album artwork, promotional images, original artwork, etc. When using Twitter you have more wiggle room. You will need an official account for your band to send out updates such as ticket info or other important tidbits. Individual members could have their own Twitter account but that is an optional decision. If you decide to go down that road, make sure each account is properly identified and differentiated from the official band feed. The same goes for Facebook: ensure each member’s profile (fan page or personal) is differentiated from the band’s page.

5. Use Tune Core

If you’re looking to expand how your music is consumed, you’ll want to set up an account at Tune Core, a company that handles online distribution of music through a variety of outlets. Tune Core does the one thing every band needs a record label to do: getting music out to the masses. Tune Core deals with the most popular online services such as iTunes, Amazon MP3, Myspace music, Zune Network, Emusic and a bevy of other online retailers. The upside to using Tune Core is its ease of use and affordable rates, something the modern day record label giant can no longer claim. While mainly used by smaller independent artists, Tune Core’s repertoire includes notables such as Zack Gross, Aretha Franklin and Trent Reznor (see the social media pattern?).

This concludes part 1 of the 10-point strategy your band should be using to promote themselves online. Part 2 will be coming shortly but in the mean time, tell us YOUR experience in using social media with your band.

Bands have always been one to push new ideas whether it comes to music or other art forms but over the years, they’ve constantly pushed the envelope on the adoption and execution of social media. Any business or brand should take note on what these groups are doing in the online space, they’d be jealous.

Early 2007 saw Radiohead start what would become a growing wave of bands embracing some form of social media and breaking away from the traditional structure of using a record label to promote themselves. “In Rainbows” by English alternative band Radiohead, was released shortly after breaking away from their label EMI too much fanfare. What made the release significant besides it being the first in over 4 years from the band was the release method; a digital download that fans could get at any price, officially from the band itself. This meant that you could pay nothing, $5.23 or even $645 if you felt so inclined. What this would do for the music industry is jumpstart a process that would turn the traditional record label on its head, kick it down then slap it across the face with some Facebook, Twitter and Myspace updates along with a good helping of original band content on YouTube. What followed next was a massive jump to social media by smaller underground bands but major acts as well.

Interacting With Fans And Knocking Down The Record Labels With Social Media: Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nail’s frontman, Trent Reznor, has been very vocal for his disdain of record labels since starting the industrial rock band in the late 80′s. 2005 saw his return to the music scene with a new release and a new crusade in regaining some of the control over material he lost to his label. The band’s first release in 5 year, With Teeth was accompanied by source files for a few tracks from the album. Trent encouraged fans to download the source tracks and create their own remixes of his songs then release it under any medium they saw fit. No royalties, no red tape, nothing that would inconvenience anyone from the average underground DJ to veteran sound producers. Remixers were free to do as they pleased which led to an ever increasing connection with fans that transcended interviews and other traditional promotions.

In 2007 the bands newest release, Year Zero, started a trend of artists, especially Nine Inch Nails embracing piracy. The album, which foretold of an Orwellian future painted with industrial overtones and electronic soundscapes was given away free to fans through a means any record label would do a double take over; torrenting it. Touring in support of the newest album, Reznor encouraged fans to download the album free of cost from wherever they could just to spite his label.

At a concert during late 2007 in Australia, Trent urged fans to pirate his album to circumvent the high CD prices his label had set. On the surface it may seem like a marketing attempt that would’ve jumpstarted any failing band but the difference between Nine Inch Nails and any act looking to cop out for cash was passion. Reznor was looking to truly connect with fans and felt the chains placed on him by management and labels was far too constricting. This is the ideal mythology of Social Media but Nine Inch Nails took it many steps forward by giving fans and potential listeners something to line; free.

Year Zero and subsequent releases would have some sort of option to listen to the album for free whether it was embracing piracy, a freemium-like model or even just giving it away. This meant that anyone slightly interested in the band had absolutely nothing to lose when listening to Nine Inch Nails’ material but the band’s connection with its fan base was also strengthened. Over the course of the next two years, NIN put out two new albums that continued this trend. The follow up to Year Zero, Ghosts Vol. 1-4 saw a tiered model of release which would delight the casual music listener all the way up to the perfectionist. The first 9 songs from the album’s 36 song setlist were available for free with absolutely no obligation. Piracy of the album itself was often encouraged but contrasted with elaborate and intricate physical releases containing artwork and packaging that added a whole other dimension to the release. The band ensured everyone had an option in digesting ‘Ghosts’, the best thing to take away from this is the tiered release model.

When one thinks of a tiered business model in today’s digital world, there is rarely an option available for free and if so, it’s limited in scope. Trent was able to build interest in NIN’s back catalog as well as current releases by letting listeners try out the material without any loss. If they didn’t like it, nothing lost, if they did, that meant a potential album download, a few dollars donated for a higher quality version or even a ticket purchase for forthcoming tours. As a thank you to fans, another album, “The Slip” was released almost a year later in 2008 that contained 10 songs in lossless quality and available totally free. No copyright infringement or legal action scares from a label but pure, wholeseome, free content that was complimented with an extensive tour weeks later.

Trent won a Webby Award in 2009 for his free, online release of “The Slip”

Embracing The Social Aspects Of YouTube: Weezer and Ok, Go!

The internet has given us access to a bevy of information but one of its most prevalent aspects has been memes. They’ve cropped up in various forms, touching upon different aspects of society yet they’re an avenue of inspiration for bands Weezer and Ok, Go.

Weezer released their single “Pork And Beans” via digital distribution in April 2008 with an accompanying music video. What set the video apart from other elaborate musical montages is its embrace of popular memes and celebrities on YouTube. The video pays homage to the Coke and Mentos guys doing experiments in the background while creating massive fountains of Mentos powered coke showers. Pianist and singerTay Zonday imitating the video style of his single “Chocolate Rain” while weaving in and out of Weezer’s own song. Star Wars Kid’s crazy lightsaber antics and Ms. South Carolina appearance are all referenced as YouTube pop-cult icons. Weezer instantly appealed to an audience of millions that regarded these memes as pop culture corner stones and as inspiration to create new content. The video went on to win a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.

Rock band Ok, gained significant popularity in 2005 after a choreographed video of their first single “A Million Ways” was first uploaded to YouTube. A year later in August 2006, the video had become the most downloaded music video at the time reaching 9 million downloads giving the band recognition for their odd choreographed videos. The band continued to gain significant notoriety for filming another choreographed video of them dancing on treadmills to an upbeat song they release, “Here We Go Again” which soon became a YouTube sensation. Within six days, over 1 million people had watched the video and eventually reached 50 million views of the original upload by April 2010.

Both of these bands appealed to a culture that thrived on the latest meme, the latest happening. Ok, Go and Weezer knew which spots to hit and created music videos around icons, concepts and ideas that were already well recognized by millions of YouTube users. By uploading their content directly to YouTube, they had an opportunity to tap in to those millions of people to promote their music.

Free Is Good, Free Is Social

If you have a product that can be released via digital means, promote it by giving it away to build interest. It’s not simply enough to give away the product and let others judge it; build hype and then release it for free or through a freemium like model to support a free version of your product in contrast to its paid equivalent.

These bands also experimented with a new and untested distribution model: digital. Your business and brand may have already experienced digital outlets but its important to stress that a lot of connections are being made online. The print industry is starting to embrace the digital world to supplement its losses from print media, your business can learn an important lesson if it’s still avoiding going online.

An aspect of this is the freemium model that offers basic services or product for free and charging more for more advanced versions of that product. Finding balance between free and paid is crucial to maintaing a freemium model for your business. Nine Inch Nails continues to experiment with this in some form but they’ve always maintained a balance. They’ve released an album in some form for free that will attract casual listeners and those interested in the band while selling a product that audiophiles will appreciate and pay for. Lacking balance with a freemium product will only distance potential consumers. If they don’t have a gateway product that doesn’t cost them anything and won’t take up too much of their time, they have no real way of gauging your services or products. The point of a freemium model is attracting potential consumers with a free version and selling them something they’re truly interested in.

Music And Social Media? How Can I Use That With My Business?

All of these bands innovated by connecting directly with their fans/consumers, they cut out the middle men, got off the stage and said “hey, let’s make it interesting to sell our music to you and have fun doing it.” The first and most important thing to take away from this is to connect DIRECTLY with your consumers, fans and friends. These bands embraced the very ideals of social media by creating Twitter accounts to announce ticket pre-sales, Facebook pages to gauge interest in releases, YouTube channels to release original content and personalized websites to let the community interact directly with the band. If you’re not taking mental notes on this, I don’t know what to tell you. All of these outlets were critical for keeping fans interested in the band and attracting new followers, simply setting up these channels, maintaining them and populating them with worthwhile content can have the same effect on your brand.

You also need to measure the effectiveness of these channels on a regular basis. Guessing what works instead of having hard numbers in front of you will be the downfall of your online presence. Bands have had these tools at their disposal for years. What once started as radio plays has morphed in to number tracking services such as RockDex and Band Metrics. Your version? Retweets, YouTube channel views, Facebook Likes, Klout Score and Google Analytics. Not checking these numbers and ignoring them when they’re not bringing in enough unique visitors is fatal.

These bands also stuck to their genres but carved out new niches for themselves. Maintaing your brand’s identity is critical but it’s just as important to test new waters and explore them diligently. Don’t go overboard and totally depart from what made your company or brand what it is but adding something interesting in to the mix will help maintain interest.

When looking to expand your business, looking for new perspectives is important. Music has always been an inspiration for artists and writers, there isn’t any reason musicians shouldn’t be a role model for your business or brand. What we’d like to know is what you can do with this strategy for YOUR business. Let us know in the comments.

Twitter is quickly shaping up to be a powerful force in the social media world. Today, its building up its core service by absorbing a commonly used Tool; The Tweet Button. Often left to third party services and some clever HTML, it’s being officially ‘introduced’ by Twitter making it easier for websites to get visitors to Tweet and Retweet links.

Building Upon TweetMeme’s Work

The Tweet Button, responsible for handling story and link promotions through Twitter is most commonly known as the Retweet button created by TweetMeme. This button can be easily integrated in to any website design but TweetMeme expects users to migrate from their solution to Twitter’s official option. Founder Nick Halstead had this to say “We expect people to switch, and we support that.” Whether the two services will coexist remains to be seen, but at 750 million daily Retweet impressions, I don’t think TweetMeme has much to worry about. Halstead is optimistic: “The buttons were never our core business, we make our money from selling filtered data – not from buttons. If buttons made you money we would be very rich.”

TweetMeme’s Alternate Approach

However, Twitter is not totally copying the Tweet button to claim as its own; it worked with TweetMeme to license some of the backend technology. TweetMeme Pro, territory Twitter isn’t looking to get in to, will still be available. But, TweetMeme is starting to shift its business away from Twitter towards analyzing realtime data streams. The company is aiming to bring this to the market under the name DataSift which would help developers analyze data coming in from millions of Tweets.

However, smaller Twitter developers could be worried by Twitter’s move. The impression given is if you develop something popular, Twitter will absorb it. This resolution could crush any small developer house and prevent new ideas from coming to the market. Are you a small time developer that integrates with Twitter? What are YOU’RE thoughts on the issue of Twitter absorbing companies that create Tools to use with the microblogging service?

Via: TechCrunch

A common mindset associated with social media:  ‘the more friends you have, the higher your status.’ Numbers can show how influential you are on the web (klout score) but numbers aren’t everything. Sure, your company page may have thousands of fans—but what if they’re only there for a quick promotion just to jump ship afterwards? This is every brand’s worst nightmare: an uninterested audience. Are they really as interested as they appear? Could they even be spammers, diluting your brand’s Facebook wall with noise? These situations must be taken in to consideration as you amass Facebook Fans and Twitter followers.

If you’re looking to promote your brand on Facebook or Twitter, you probably have the notion of ‘more fans means greater success’ hammered in to your head. This is not always the case as those fans may not stick around for the long run and any tactics you use to pump up your fan count may only be a temporary means of creating interest. The easiest methods to use are giveaways and limited availability offers. As with the case of Einstein Bros.’ free bagel giveaway, it brought their number of Facebook fans from less than 5,000 to an astounding 400,000. Before you run off to put into motion a massive product giveaway, realize this: those 395,000+ fans may like free bagels, but do they like Einstein Bros. enough to pay for their bagels again? While enough of those new fans wholeheartedly enjoyed their free bagel, they may not be interested at all in buying more bagels from Einstein Bros.

Targeted Connections

The best practice is to filter your promotion. Blatantly pushing an offer will reach those who are simply not interested, putting your social network efforts at risk of being discredited as spam. Targeting those who are interested in your industry is a very powerful thing. If you’re reviewing the latest and greatest Apple product, you won’t want to promote to die-hard PC enthusiasts, but consider promoting to people interested in buying a new computer and have yet to decide which company to purchase from in addition to those who are already loyal to your brand.

Influencers

Another tip is to use influencers or those who specialize in your industry. In promoting a product or service, be sure to contact blogs and other consumer product review websites that focus on similar products or services. These influencers can be invaluable. They already have a following of consumers who trust them to provide advice and insight into their industry. Consider a unique spin, such as including benchmark tests others haven’t published or a review from the perspective of the average consumer, a professional, a graphic designer and so on.

Influencers can also be used to extend your own network, whether they be Facebook fans or Twitter followers. Perusing through your replies or posts on your wall should give you an idea of who will be a good influencer. Are they actively engaged in conversation relevant to your brand? Sending links and offers to these people is a great way to increase your brand’s presence by ensuring everyone receives some kind of benefit for following you. Creating exclusive promotions for influencers to use and spread to their network will bring in new people who would be interested in your brand, at the same time thanking existing fans for their loyalty. This method is most likely to attract the highest number of people interested in your brand. They will remain fans/followers beyond the promotional offer as they share the same interests as the influencer who referred them. Social Media Examiner recommends a digital gift card with a limited amount of uses that can be embedded on a blog or online profile. Ultimately it comes down to ease of use and how well it can be spread. Make sure your promotion is easy to fill out and doesn’t look like spam.

Customer Service, Brand Reputation

A consumer looks for company engagement beyond the occasional email discount or the opportunity to fill out a survey. As more brands compete for attention, the idea of a personalized experience is consistently lost. Social networking provides the opportunity to gauge the overall sentiment around your brand and whether or not people are satisfied with what you’re offering. If and when you find the consumer disappointed, this is the perfect opportunity to regain their loyalty. No one expects a brand or company to be perfect, but the fact that some go out of their way to engage consumers and resolve their issues is appreciated. While that person may be completely dissatisfied with the product, a representative looking to remedy the situation is impressive to the consumer and makes them feel important. The key is to really listen to the customer’s wants and needs. These efforts might regain the consumer’s favorable opinion. They are then likely to share the positive experience with their network.

Have your social media efforts been successful? Tell us your story of how your followers/fans have interacted with your brand and what you’ve done to keep them interested.

The momentum, was too strong. Real-time search — and Google’s (Google) inability to beatTwitter at it — became a huge trend in 2009. Everyone wanted a piece of it, and Twitter had the goods. When you want to find out what’s happening right now, this very minute, Twitter’s search trumped Google, and Google had no choice but to react. Luckily for Twitter, the reaction came right on time. Both Bing (Bing) and Google signed a deal with Twitter to incorporate real-time results from Twitter into web searches, just as Twitter’s flat traffic figures became impossible to hide. The effect of this deal is still unknown, but when Google sends you traffic, you can bet it’s going to be noticeable.

Twitter’s future is still uncertain. We still don’t know the overall business plan beyond a few hints at at least some current revenue, and we still don’t know if the service’s huge popularity boom in 2009 was just a passing fad. One thing is certain, though: The Google deal was the adrenaline injection Twitter needed. If Twitter is really destined to become the world’s new SMS, 2010 is the time to do it, and we’re happy to be along for the ride.

The API (Application Programming Interface) has been an essential component for creating applications that hook into or utilize web apps such as Twitter and Facebook.  With it, developers have been able to create some amazing mashups and tools.   Some of the most helpful and oft-used applications on the web wouldn’t be possible without APIs.

1. Google Maps

1. Google’s Official Documentation for the Maps API is probably the best place to start. The site offers a developer’s guide, code samples and demos, case studies, and even a sandbox where you can test stuff out while you learn.

2. Earlier this year, Google abandoned its official Google Maps API blog in favor of a new Google Geo Developers Blog. The new blog encompasses all of Google’s mapping APIs, including both Maps and their Earth program. The blog is filled with useful posts about using the API, frequent news updates about changes and developments with the API itself, and links to creative uses by other developers.

3. The Official Google Maps API Group is probably the first place you should check out if you need help with your Maps-based project. The extremely active group hosts hundreds of thousands of discussions and is frequented by both seasoned and rookie developers, as well as Google Maps API core contributors. It is often the first place that upcoming API changes are made, so if your project hinges on the Google Maps API, then you should definitely keep an eye on the official group.

4. Mapki is an unofficial Google Maps API wiki at which Maps developers come together to discuss and document the API. The site has a huge list of developer’s tools and tutorials, as well as code snippets and FAQs.

5. Mike Williams’ Google Maps API Tutorial is an excellent and up-to-date overview of the API. It’s a great getting started point for anyone trying to get into mashup development with Google Maps or integrating maps into an existing project.

2. Facebook / Facebook Connect

1. The Facebook Developers site is one of the most complete and well-made and maintained developer sites on the web. It has a great getting started guide, as well as super active forums, an official blog for developers, and more.

2. If you’re developing anything for the Facebook Platform, then Facebook Developer Tools page is a must-bookmark resource. The tools, including test consoles for the API and FBML, as well as a playground environment for Facebook Connect, are super helpful for anyone working with the app platform or Facebook’s other developer APIs. They also recently released the Facebook Connect Wizard that makes integrating Facebook Connect with your site a snap.

3. Facebook’s Wiki offers a plethora of useful information for developers from guidelines to how-to guides to code examples and more. The site hosts over a thousand articles ensuring that if you need to do it with Facebook’s APIs, there’s a good bet you’ll find the information you need to know to learn how to do it somewhere in the wiki.

4. Though it hasn’t been updated in just over a year, the unofficial Facebook Developer online magazine is still an amazing resource for Facebook developers. It has an incredible archive of useful articles, tutorials, guides, and case studies that are still available for viewing.

5. It may just be a clever marketing tactic to get people to sign up for its hosting services, but Joyent’s popular Facebook Applications Developer Program, which offers free hosting for app developers for one year, is nonetheless a great resource. Especially for developers just getting into Facebook, Joyent’s program offers a no-risk way to test the waters.

3. Twitter

1. The place to start, of course, is the Official API Wiki, which Twitter has packed with documentation, guides, tutorials, known issues, and FAQs for dealing with the Twitter API and OAuth.

2. Being Twitter, the Twitter API team naturally also has a Twitter account (@twitterapi). The account is updated by 5 core API developers at Twitter with news about the Twitter API and offers support to developers using it to build applications.

3. Twitter also has a blog, on which the company posts updates about their developer tools, as well as links to content that is helpful for developers, and spotlights of exceptional API uses. Also be sure to keep an eye on the service’s status blog to keep track of downtime issues and scheduled maintenance.

4. The Twitter Development Talk group/mailing list, which is hosted by Google Groups, is one of the best places to go to for help when you’re stuck with a Twitter API development problem. The site has had over 20,000 messages posted to it and is frequented by the API team. Twitter also operates a group for API announcements, which is a must-follow for developers craving the latest Twitter API news.

5. A search for Twitter on GitHub will return a ton of useful resources for developers, including over 13,000 code snippets and over 1,300 repositories, including many of the most popular Twitter libraries and wrappers. You can also find some of the open source technologies that actually power Twitter on GitHub.

4. Flickr

1. code.flickr is the home of Flickr’s official developer blog, and their official forum community. There are thousands of discussions in the Flickr API pool, as well as developers sharing screen shots of their creations, and the site also hosts the official SVN and Trac pages for the Flickr API, as well.

2. Yahoo!’s impressive Developer Network hosts a helpful Flickr section with a basic overview of the API, and links to the API key application form and information about rate limits and commercial usage. However, if you want meatier documentation, you’ll need to check out Flickr’s Official Flickr API documentation page, which offers a ton of information about using the API and links to third-party API kits for languages including ActionScript, Java, .NET, Objective-C, PHP, Python, and Ruby, among others.

3. If you’re still stumped, a good place to turn for an answer would be the YWS-Flickr Group on Yahoo! Groups. The active discussion list has over 3,000 Flickr developers that regularly share tips and tricks and help each other out.

4. The Ultimate Guide to Decoding the Flickr API is a very impressive tutorial from Nettuts+. Though just a single tutorial, it is a very good overview that is definitely a good place to start for developers interested in utilizing the Flickr API.

5. GitHub has a collection of over 200 Flickr code repositories including libraries and other helpful tools for developers. Ruby, JavaScript, Python, and PHP are the most popular languages among Flickr developers on the code sharing site.

A study conducted by Harvard Business Review reveals that most Twitter users don’t actually use the service much, or even at all.  In fact, 10% of active users are responsible for over 90% of all Tweets.

According to the research, conducted on a random sample of about 300,000 Twitter (Twitter) users in May 2009, 25% of Twitter users don’t tweet at all, while 50% of users tweet less than once every 74 hours.  Active users, on the other hand, tweet a lot, which makes Twitter a lot more like Wikipedia (Wikipedia) than an average social network (see graph below, courtesy of HBR).

Although this may sound strange at first, Twitter really is more like Wikipedia than, say, Facebook (Facebook). Twitter is not so much about connecting with your friends, it’s about broadcasting information.  Although it doesn’t necessarily take much creativity to create a tweet, only the most creative users actually persist in tweeting every day over a longer time period.

However, Twitter is also similar to a instant messaging tool, which should have a very different curve, with a larger proportion of users contributing to the number of overall tweets. It seems that Twitter’s micropublishing component is winning over its chatting component.

The Harvard Business Review study reveals another interesting tidbit: men seem to follow men more than women on Twitter. There are more women than men on twitter – approximately 55% of all users are female – but an average man will follow a man in 65% of all cases, while a woman will follow a man in 56% of cases. It’s hard to pull any meaningful conclusions from this anomaly, except one: Twitter is different than other social networks. But you already knew that.

Facebook recently passed 350 million users worldwide, but the lingering question about the social network (and social media in general) is if it’s making any money. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the answer seems to be that at the least, revenue, if not profits, at social networking sites is starting to take off.

Using data from NYPPEX, the WSJ reports that Facebook’s estimated to generate $710 million in revenue next year. That would represent more than a 40 percent improvement from this year, where the social network is rumored to be bringing in about $500 million in revenue.

Elsewhere, NYPPEX estimates that LinkedIn will generate more than $200 million in revenue in 2010. The firm also says that four years from now, Facebook could be doing $1.9 billion sales, LinkedIn could be at better than $300 million and Twitter could be at $283 million (how exactly, they’re not sure either).

Of course, all of that is based on the social networking sites mentioned continuing to grow strongly both in terms of users and sales. That’s been anything but a given in the short history of social media, where we’ve seen sites rise and fall quickly. Nonetheless, the report does seem to support other research that indicates money is flowing into social media marketing at an increasing rate.