Ustrategy

Mazda Attempts to Recapture Customers with New Facebook Game. But Does it Have Rapping Hamsters?

InsideFacebook reported today about the new Mazda social media campaign—this time using game application within its Facebook profile.

The game, called DriverVille (how else), is well designed and utilizes textbook game mechanics including levels, monetary icons (“Driver bucks”), customization features, and collected prizes and tools (Cowboy boots) to help advance the player to the cavorted prize—a Mazda2.

Mazda has been a pioneer in the way it connects with its target audiences, all the way from its Zoom-Zoom campaign. When it comes to the Gen Y demographic, companies like Ford and Kia, who target similar audiences, have ramped up their social media channel activities and have gotten better at their integrated marketing approach.

Kia’s TV commercial featuring hamsters rapping “This or That” has been a success with over 2.3M views on YouTube alone. Kia’s integrated marketing campaign includes a Facebook page, YouTube channel, twitter, and the traditional TV spot. The recent 60-second commercial has been extremely sticky.

Choosing DriverVille as its campaign indicates one of two things: either Mazda has figured out that its current (or desired) Facebook fans are of the video-game player demographic or, it is trying to focus on this GenY sub-segment to differentiate itself and carve a bigger slice of the pie.

Either way, it will be interesting to see how Mazda ties this channel with its other marketing activities and whether it too can create a buzz that sticks on your mind once you experience it like “This, or that” has.

Social Media Making Its Way to Higher Ed: Changing the way students and teachers will create, consume, and interact with curricular content

If you are over 30, you probably remember the experience of education involving books, in-class lectures, study groups in the library, and long TA sessions. Today's higher ed is a completely different ball game. From live video lectures by overseas professors, to lecture delivered on mobile phone, to online registration, tests, and grading, and to distance learning--students and faculty today can have a completely different experience. And while still in infancy, we are embarking on a revolutionary change in the higher ed sector not unlike, and propelled by, the socio-digital revolution we've been experiencing in the past five years.

This week, a number of key announcements in the Education sector shine an even brighter light on the monumental changes ahead.

On Wednesday, Blackboard--a learning management system for higher ed and the major player in this sector--announced it has acquired Wimba and Elluminate. Until now, the Blackboard learning management system focused on asynchronous learning--essentially enabling access and consumption of content any time outside the classroom on demand. With the evolving needs of students to consume content anywhere, at anytime, real time, Blackboard's acquisition of Wimba and Elluminate gets it closer to doing just that.

Also this week, Kaltura announced the release of its Building Block for Blackboard. Kaltura is a current Ustrategy client and its founders are personal friends so I will stay brief on this front: Kaltura is the only open source rich media management platform with an emphasis on the education sector. Kaltura provides curricular media solution for faculty and students that enables them to use video in courses, to do synchronous slide presentation in video, rich media assignments, as well as provides a media middle-layer that connects media products and applications across multiple devices, formats, and in HTML5 (which solves Flash consumption issues on iPhone and iPad).  You can see more on the Kaltura website.

Going back to the article I wrote in December of 2009, predicting how Social Media will change in 2010, the Blackboard acquisition and rapid adoption of alike solutions in education are a strong signal that social media is evolving and moving into new domains. Rich media, combined with the expectation of socio-digital freedom, are dictating a completely new way of learning. And while some criticize the merger, stating blackboard isn't performing to satisfaction and raising concerns of customer implications--as in any innovation and change management, I predict this too shall pass and education will continue to evolve, matching itself better with the way students and faculty--people--learn, interact, and behave in today's world.

You can read more about the implications of the acquisition to higher ed in this post, written by major higher ed blogger Josh Kim as well as the WSJ online report.

Live blogging from NewCommForum 2010

Today I'm at NewCommForum down in San Mateo. A best-kept-secret conference that impresses me with the quality of its sessions, conversations, and people.

This morning, the session opened with United Breaks Guitars on the screen--a video which has become one of my favorite examples of what New Media has been enabling people to do: express themselves as powerfully, and equally to what was once only possible for powerful customers and attorneys. Halfway through the video, Dave Carroll--the singer who created the video in protest of his poor experience with the airline--came on stage and completed the song live.

This, is the quintessential expression of the convergence between the online and the offline world that so many brands are trying to figure out and that consumers, are vying for whether they are able to articulate it or not. Just look at the buzz around startups Foursquare, Loopt, QuickMark who are looking to capitalize on that invisible—and yet so solid—line between our real and digital worlds.

Great start to a full day of closing gaps, visualizing the future, and connecting with those thought leaders who go beyond the twitter monologue and who are truly interested in—well, thinking, about the possibilities, the future, and our evolving culture.

And, a mid-morning update: Edelman's VP of Digital reported Carroll's campaign resulted in a loss of $180M...the equivalent cost of replacing 51,000 guitars. United is a client of Edelman.

WebProNews Interview: Enterprise Social Media: What to Expect and How to Plan Ahead

In February, I spoke at the Online Marketing Summit. You can read about key takeaways here and download the presentation, or watch this video in which Mike McDonald of WebProNews hits on the key points from the session. Your comments and thoughts are welcomed!

Social Media, PR, and Business: Horn Group, Google, Altimeter, SAP, and C-Change Weigh In

In November 2008—in the eye of both the economic debacle's and the Social Media tornados—the Horn Group, a leading communications firm headquartered in San Francisco,  held an event titled “Is Social Media Killing PR.”  As part of the event, an expert panel including Kara Swisher, Jeremiah Owyang, and Susan Etlinger shared their perspectives on where that new thing called Social Media was going.  (Remember, this was November of ‘08).

The Horn Group’s space, on its three levels, was near-packed and the air was thick with anxiety. I was live-blogging from the event and the response was surprising: People appreciated the update, the tangibility around the topic, and access to others who are at the same confused state as they were. Social Media, back then, was still the“wild west”; grounding was weighed in gold. And for PR professionals who were losing their jobs by the bushels, the conversation was paramount.

That was then. This month, the Horn Group held another event—this time focusing on Social Media and Business. The space was three quarters empty, people were tweeting and blogging, a tweeter feed displayed above the panel, and the general feel was, as in most of the Valley’s networking events, cordial with low level interest, focused on connecting and listening rather than on intensely engaging.

On the panel were John Byrne, formerly at NewsWeek and now founder of C-Change Media, Karen Wickre, Google Communications and Public Affairs, Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, and Don Bulmer, Vice President of Global Communications at SAP.  

Below are some highlights from the panel’s discussion, starting with Karen Wickre.

Wickre: Content surfaces content.  Part of our job as communicators is to surface more, different, new news information.

New media is no longer about putting content out there but about the interaction of people and content. Media becomes relevant when you appropriately target. Mobile is a big push but companies shouldn’t mobilize all their content: it should be relevant to people’s needs and content consumption patterns.

Li: Companies should focus on building relationships, not transactions. SAP is a good example of that.

Byrne: A story is an intellectual campfire around which you keep people. If you orchestrate it so that it doesn’t die out, the content has even greater value than the original.

Bulmer: Social Media is a great opportunity for Thought Leadership for a B2B company. It has to have focus, depth, and continuity. Thought Leadership done well in this environment can yield ideas and insights that can transform an organization. 

Thought Leadership = Social Currency (here at Ustrategy, we really like this statement!)  If a company can provide information its audiences can’t get anywhere else  they provide Thought Leadership. Businesses prefer to do business with either the creators of content or those who participated in it.

Li: You can choose to do nothing and stay in the bubble: you won’t get hurt but you also won’t build relationships.

B2B structure, and the B2B executives aren’t set for Social Media. They need to control every bit of interaction and to avoid negative exposure. Uncontrolled conversation terrify execs. Mindsets are hard to change: change happens through small steps and demonstrated success. Traditional B2B executives aren’t “sharers” by nature.

Bulmer: I own 25% of budget and influence 75% of value delivered . When people see success they take ownership. I try not to get concerned by money but focus on value.

Wickre: (Speaking about success metrics) I’m not worried about the number of followers. The people who want that bit of info find it and forward it.

Byrne originated The Engagement Model for ROI on online produced content and user-generated-content on NewsWeek.com.  “We started with a goal of 15:1 return on content from others, got to 37:1, wanted to get to 100.” Got the journalist committed to taking part in the conversation, asked readers what they wanted to read about, picked stories and assigned to journalists.  The stories that were generated by readers were often more popular and generated highest traffic on NewsWeek online.

Li: Analytics aren’t metrics. Metrics tie to objectives. The ones that have meaning to you.  Analytics are the results (survey, google, etc) I don’t care about traffic and clicks- I care about engagement quality.

Three pieces of advice to an anti-social CEO who just doesn’t think he or his company needs to invest in Social Media:

1. Realize that you are not in control and you know it. You need to acknowledge that before anything else.
2. What’s really important to you today? Pick one of the strategic goal and see how Social can help with that.
3. Activities that are happening without you. If you’re doing nothing—that’s a problem. If a lot and you’re not part of it—that’s a problem too.

We have to be very disciplined about this. It’s a social disciplin. Even in google where people have a great deal of freedom, there’s also discipline. You create Sandboxes, and inside these, people can do whatever, as much as, they wish.

Bulmer: SAP just launched the www.everycompanyisamediacompany.com open forum blog. People are still under the perception that the term Media refers to advertising and PR while Social Media refers to Facebook, Twitter. People should keep in mind that Social Media is more than a front line issue. There’s a lot of value that can be derived from its core business operations.

Tips and insights for getting beyond where you are now”

Wickre: “I’m choosing to be retro”: Read the ClueTrain Manifesto and Dave Weinberger’s Small Pieces. They were written over 10 years ago but read them now with an eye toward social media.

Byrne: Use twitter smartly. I’ve been able to find the experts in any given field, benefit from what they’re reading, thinking, in real time that’s not possible anywhere else

Li: Cluetrain Manifesto and think about how every company can be a media company.

And my takeaway?  

Social Media is no longer a threat. Professionals and brands know it’s now a required channel in their overall marketing plan and PR and Marketing professionals now look for new tools, methods, frameworks rather than for a referee to call Penalty. 

Finally, I liked Tom Foremsky’s comment after a few long minutes  discussing the word of the evening: “authenticity.” Tom said: “Not everything needs to be authentic. (Sometimes) a press release is just a press release.”

Social Media in the Enterprise: 5 Keys to Creating A Successful Foundation

In February, I spoke at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego about 5 key areas social media marketers in large enterprises should think about. 

With some exceptions, most enterprises today know they need to have presence on the interactive web. They are allocating budgets, resources, and include digital strategy in their marketing goals.

A recent study from MarketingSherpa shows enterprises are, on average, planning to allocate 50% more budget in 2010 to social media marketing budgets.

And while some enterprises get things right—most still get most of it wrong. In 2009 a MarketingProf’s survey (as posted by Brian Solis) revealed 53% of CMOs were unsure about their returns from Twitter activities and 50% were unable to assess the ROI of linkedin or industry blogs.

1. Enterprises are reactive. They focus on tactics like getting a page on facebook or on getting a twitter account instead of strategically building their digital identity and digital goals. Once launched, they face a range of issues—from inability to drive users to action to inability to respond to negative comments to poor internal collaboration and boiling politics.
2. Enterprises use the wrong resources. Being reactive, and lacking the understanding of what is involved in creating their presence on social media, implementing a sound plan, and instituting the right processes internally—enterprises resolve hire the wrong resources. Back in December, Clorox reportedly announced it was hiring an attorney (an attorney!!!) to oversee its social media activities.  Not as extreme, most organizations end up crowning an internal resource who doesn’t have the necessary knowledge or skill set, they hire self-proclaimed gurus, or they turn to budget-draining agencies who claim to provide social media service but who do not have experience in online customer psychology strategies.
3. Enterprises try to use their existing mental models. They either try to bend old methodologies to the new customer—using social media to run surveys and push promotions—or, they try to bend the new customer to their existing methods, sticking with old plans and attempting to force the customer to follow processes that no longer hold.

At the core of their failure to monetize social media, is the fact that enterprises today fail to realize is that customers’ behaviors, and their psychology, have changed drastically with Web2.0 and social media channels. Enterprises traditionally only focused on behaviors: how to grow awareness, how to simplify use, how to encourage word-of-mouth. They fail to register that people’s psychology is shifting and this lack of expertise in customer psychology renders many enterprise social media tactics useless.

So what should enterprises focus on today?

5 Keys to Successful Enterprise Social Media Strategy

1. Make sure you have a vision-driven strategy. Strategy alone is no longer sufficient—it needs to speak to the greater vision of your company as a digital entity. What does your company want to be in the digital age? How do you want your customers to see, think, and feel about you online? How similar or different is it from how you want your customers to view your actual products and services?
2. Think about owning your content. While social networks are free for now, nothing’s free forever. Ning, facebook, YouTube, twitter are all proprietary “locations” your customers go to and where they deposit bits of data on a regular basis. These networks are already running data analysis on their members and will have more information about your customers—the customers you paid to acquire with hard work and good products—than you will ever have and they’ll charge you a load’a money to access that information. To ensure you have access to your customers wherever they are, consider using open-source solutions like Drupal or cross-network solutions like Looppa to help you have both the most complete view of your existing and prospective customers’ behaviors and needs and to build meaningful experiences on YOUR location in which customers will want to partake.
3. Leverage the right resources…the right way. The larger the organization, the more effective the right outside resource would be to the growth of your social media practice. Outside resources are excellent for bringing a fresh and deep understanding in areas that are new to the organization, helping you gain speed while the organization adapts its policies, and helping to set processes, and educating the organization before they transition out while internal resources take the front row.
4. Build alignment across the organization. To be successful, you must create alignment across key functions in your organizations and a work flow process. Marketing may be putting up great messaging about the company and its offering, PR may be getting it to the right places, but when you get a question or complaint, Supports needs to be right on it, providing help while sending the same messages you worked so hard to create. Employees—your employees—are already on social networks. Do they know what to do if they see a complaint? Do they understand the implications of posting work related information online? Or even commenting while their work information is visible? All this needs to be part of a plan, a process, a framework everyone can work from. It may change—it WILL change—but at least you have a foundation to work from.
5. Plan to evolve and adapt. It took man 15 million years to evolve from the monkey, radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million people, laptop only 4, and a tweet….a few seconds. Whatever plans you’re making, they should include a balance between a solid foundation and flexibility in application.
   
   And…one more important thing to think about:

Social media, in the end, is a woman’s world.  Oprah, Mari Smith, Janet Fauts, Ariana Huffington, Xeni Jardin, and Melinda Roberts are but a few examples of women with loyal following who are about sounding their voice and making a difference. In its nature, social media is about relationship, connection, personal expression—all those things women have always been good at and men, well, less so. As the Web continues to give us more ways to connect, transcending distance, geography, culture, and economic status, it is women that companies and marketers should keep in mind. Women make more than 75% of purchasing decisions, they spend more time, and in more than one, niche groups, and are the fastest growing user group on Facebook and like-networks.

Enterprises who look to start, or who have already launched their digital strategy, should re-evaluate their strategy to ensure it is for its vision-driven, that they are structured to continue and own meaningful content, that their resources are truly the best ones for their goals, that they have created an internal alignment process across the organization, built-in ability to evolve, and, that they focus on women as both buyers and decision makers.

You can download the full presentation here. It has additional details for enterprises who are just starting, have some digital media strategy in place, or who are on their way but looking to take it to the next level. As always, comments are welcomed!

10 Ways Social Media will Change in 2010

Originally published on ReadWriteWeb

This time last year, I wrote about the 10 ways social media will change 2009, and while all predictions have materialized or are on their way, it has only become clear in recent months how significant of a change we've seen this year. 2009 will go down as the year in which the shroud of uncertainty was lifted off of social media and mainstream adoption began at the speed of light. Barack Obama's campaign proved that social media can mobilize millions into action, and Iran's election protests demonstrated its importance to the freedom of speech.

Today, it is impossible to separate social media from the online world. Facebook reached 350 million users last month -- 70% of whom are outside the US -- and it accounts for 25% of the Web's traffic, nearly one in five people on the web use Twitter, and 94% of enterprises plan to maintain or increase their investment in enterprise social media tools. The social media conversation is no longer considered a Web 2.0 fad -- it is taking place in homes, small businesses and corporate boardrooms, and extending its reach into the nonprofit, education and health sectors. From feeling excitement, novelty, bewilderment, and overwhelmed, a growing number of people now speak of social media as simply another channel or tactic.

So what will social Web bring next? What will "being connected" mean? What will the next experience be for the 2 two billion people who are connected to the Internet? Here are 10 ways what we've called social media will evolve in 2010.

1. Social Media Will Become a Single, Cohesive Experience Embedded In Our Activities and Technologies

By this time next year, social media will no longer be "social media" -- it will be an integrated, unquestionable component of your online and offline experience. Last year we spoke of cross-platform integration across media sites. Open APIs and OpenID made that possible, and even LinkedIn announced last month that it too will finally open its APIs. 2010 will be about integration and a single, cohesive experience across platforms as well as across products and devices -- Web, mobile, TV, and video -- will become near-inseparable experiences.

Users will access content from any device or platform, co-create and mashup their photos, videos and text with traditional content while interacting with each other. Publishers will create new kinds of content for the connected world, and the last years' lull in good entertainment will finally be lifted. This trend will cut across all of our activities -- from playing games to shopping to emailing and texting -- nothing will be lost; everything we do will be gathered and streamed together, allowing people to view their world of activities as if it were projected in front of them, open to change, review and input at any point in time from any device or online tool.

2. Social Media Innovation Will No Longer Be Limited By Technology

With Web technology maturing and the near-elimination of previous barriers such closed platforms and discrete logins, companies will now look to innovate the way they use existing technology, rather than focus on technology enhancements themselves. We will see a move to leverage existing assets -- content and capabilities -- in new ways, turning information to wisdom and insight to action. Whereas once user research required focus groups and usability tests, companies will utilize the Web's capabilities to achieve the same. Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people's attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input.

3. Mobile Will Take Center Stage

Worldwide, the iPhone alone accounts for about 33% of mobile web traffic and IDC predicts the number of mobile web users will hit one billion by 2010. As the technological barriers come down, people will increasingly use their phones on-the-go to access social networks, search, read content and find location-based information. Our phones will be used as a central hub and beacon -- enabling a slew of new capabilities and experiences.

4. Expect an Intense Battle As People and Companies Look To Own Their Own Content

2009 marked the year of open Web, and divergence of content, making content available anywhere, anytime, by anyone and to everyone; it was the year content exploded across the web, platforms and devices. The issue Google solved so magically -- content find-ability -- will become all but moot in the coming years. Instead, content relevance and quality will become the key focus. In 2010 we will start to see convergence as companies take measures to own their own content, its location and its cost. Last month, Rupert Murdoch announced he may opt News Corp out of Google, instructing it to de-index its publications from the search engine and giving exclusive rights to Bing for a fee. This means that content publishers will be able to determine where they make their content available and at what cost.

With the growth of user generated content and the dwindling relevance of search results, people will gradually shift their trust from large aggregators like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and move to searching and finding content at specific locations and, eventually, creating and integrating their own content hub into the rest of their personal digital experience. "People don't realize that everything they do -- on Facebook, Ning, Google and with their credit cards -- is being collected, tracked, analyzed, owned and monetized by these companies who provide (so-called) free services. It's not a healthy model." Says John Faber, COO of af83, a Drupal development house and co-founder of the upcoming DrupalCon.

5. Enterprises Will Shape the Next Generation of What We've Called "Social Media"

It was easy to forget that enterprises and large institutions are the originators of some of social media's pillars: listservs, forums, intranets and collaboration tools. As social media became a public domain, enterprises have been cautious participants, predominantly in the product space, with few visionary leaders like Zappos, IBM and Dell. But cautionary they are no more. With a reported average of 25% increase in funds allocation toward social media activities, in 2010 we will see a surge in adoption of social media across product, services and solutions companies.

Having the need and the funds, enterprises will determine the next generation of social experiences. They will push enhancements that meet their needs, specifically around monitoring, automation, alignment with the sales cycle and integration with existing systems, expanding social "media" to encompass the ecosystem of social computing across solutions, and making them actionable for the company. Jive, blueKiwi, Remindo and Sharepoint support companies internally. Most recently, Salesforce.com released Chatter, designed to turn the corporation, and CRM, social. With its APIs opening later this year, "Chatter can become a new layer over its Force platform, already being used by 68,000 customers, enabling companies and developers to leverage the Salesforce infrastructure in a secure environment," said Bruce Francis, VP corporate strategy Salesforce.com.

6. ROI Will Be Measured -- and It Will Matter

Return on investment on social media activities has been challenging to most companies this year. Surveys show only 18% of companies say they saw meaningful return on investment from their social media activities while the other 72% report modest, no return or inability to measure the return on their investment in social media. While the definition of ROI is evolving to better fit the world of relationships and networks, the ability to demonstrate ROI in hard numbers -- not in followers or fans -- will become a baseline business requirement in 2010. Already, both traditional firms and startups are working feverishly to demonstrate they can turn hype into science. But, only those companies who will be able to analyze and predict hard returns on investments will last.

7. Finally: Real, Cool and Very Bizarre Online-Offline Integration

Virtual worlds, games and avatars were just the beginning of the online-offline integration. In 2010 we'll see a greater push on this front as distance and physical walls will matter even less. Augmented reality -- already integrated into Yelp's latest geo-tagging enabled application -- will allow users to find relevant information and people depending on their location; Twitter360 will help people find each other, connect and see updates by location all while on the go through their mobile device. People will be able to scan products on shelves but process the sale online; you'll never need to ask for a business card again at events -- and you may actually get promotions and discounts that match your interests.

8. Many "Old" Skills Will Be Needed Again

An economic downturn coupled with the surge of social media eliminated many traditional marketing and PR roles. But this year, we'll see the return of professionals to the field. Enterprises will turn back to marketers who specialize in understanding customer psychology and who are experienced in addressing these both offline and online. Research and development divisions will turn to customer experience professionals to draw on user needs and ideation as part of their product improvement and innovation process, and sales and support will continue to deliver services online. Expect to see job postings for social media managers, social media psychologists and social media executive administrators to help manage the infinite tasks involved with communities and social media campaigns.

9. Women Will Rule Social Media

2009 revealed the growing role women play online. Women make 75% of all buying decisions for the home, and 85% of all consumer purchases. Social networks have at least 50% female members, and it is women ages 35-55 who make up the fastest-growing population on Facebook -- not the expected Gen-Y population as previously anticipated. Previously limited by organizational hierarchies and job demands, women today are free to create, express and promote themselves using social media channels. Innately excelling at communication, relationship building and multi-level attention, women will take the reins on their careers and network becoming both a sought-after consumer segment as well as driving business strategies for social-media-connected companies.

10. Social Media Will Move Into New Domains

As social media becomes integrated into our experiences online, it will have an impact on verticals such as nonprofit, job training, education, and health care. University of the People -- a UN-backed initiative to offer free education in emerging markets -- is using the power of distance learning and virtual collaboration. Obama's campaign for job training also highly relies on the power of online interaction. "The top 10 companies to work for are going to become learning companies. Instead of having 10% of time to philanthropic activities, they'll spend 10% of time on learning or teaching," says Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and director at iStrategyLabs. "Sites like I'm Too Young For This, and Know Cancer Community prove that no topic is too complex for social collaboration."

"These site help people connect and share information previously only available to their doctors," says Jennifer Benz of Benz Communications, a consultancy that works with companies to introduce social media capabilities into employee benefits and health care communication. "Companies who integrate social collaboration and conversation into health care find they have more knowledgeable employees and patients who can make smarter choices and improve the quality of their care."

Social Media as we knew it even 6 months ago has changed. By this time next year, it will have become fully integrated into everything we do online and offline. By the end of this year we'll see a move toward greater control over content and companies will fight over social media land grabs in preparation for the future.

By next year, we will no longer speak about social media technology but about what we've been able to do with it. We will discuss power of ownership and only accept quality, relevant content. As we move to automatically accept a narrowed selection of the mass content online, we will begin to crave larger reach again and the natural process of chaos and order -- constriction and expansion, convergence and divergence -- will repeat itself in an ever-accelerating pace.

Whether you are an individual, a startup, small business or a large corporation, an online presence and an ongoing conversation with your constituents is a baseline requirement -- and will take time and expertise. Companies are diverting resources and rethinking their traditional outreach strategies. "Whether you're recruiting, looking for investment, trying to get buzz -- you need to be visible," says John Nogrady, director, emerging business at Microsoft bizpark, and serial entrepreneur. Brian Zisk, founder of SFMusicTech, which is taking place in San Francisco this week, says "If you're out there as a genuine contributor in the community you can reach out to many people. Take the FooFighters' free Facebook concert, or Zoe Keating -- a local artist with over 1.2 million fans online. Their ability to connect with their fans was made possible because of the Internet."

As you read this, it may seem far reaching but so did a presidency won through the power of online community not too long ago. Whether you are a novice finally giving in to the pressures to "get on social media," someone who is highly experienced, or a visionary already looking for the next big thing, you will play a role in social media in the coming year even through your simple, daily actions. And as the social media wave dissipates into the vast ocean of connected experiences, the term itself will become an entry in dictionaries and encyclopedias and we will embark on a new era of knowledge, accessibility and experiences unbound by distance, time or physical walls.

Getting To Popular: How Musicians Use Social Media for Marketing

Opening the SFMusicTech conference is a panel of musicians, content syndicators, and consultants discussing outreach strategies for musicians:  Francis Ten- West Indian Girl (and Moderator), Davis Powers- Current TV, David Katznelson-Birdman Recording Group, Zoe Keating- Cellist and Composer, Matt Goldberg- VolumeEleven, Emily White-WhiteSmith Entertainment.

Ten: How do we define “popular enough”?

White: Not having a day job. If you can make your living doing your music, that’s success. Your retirement plan is your email list.

When I took on Family of the Year, I had to do some education. I showed them what we could do on Facebook and Twitter and we actually released an EP in the last 3 months.  Email list is extremely important. Amanda Palmer sold 10,000 albums in the first week, 8,500 directly through her site, 1000 through iTunes, and only 500 through the label.

Katznelson: Sustainable momentum-fueled organization. In the world that we live in, playing live is essential, getting out there is essential. It means you’re a working artist hitting the pavement with your art.

Keating: Introducing your music to people who can introduce it to more people than you could. My career has moved with the internet. Working with people who are more known than I am. RadioLab has helped me even more than twitter—and maybe led me to Twitter. The show is distributed nationally on NPR and has done more for my career than anything else. My goal is to be omnipresent because then things just happen for you. Start in as many places as possible, start small and get known.

My responsibility is to stay on top of the best communication method for my fans at any point in time. Some people I can only reach on Twitter, others through email list, others on MySpace. I figure out how they want to be contacted and I contact them that way. I answer my fan mail and twitter messages. It’s a lot of bang for the bank and it’s nice to be in touch with them.

You need to be ready. Magazine spread, being on KCRW 3 times, twitter. 7X7 magazine said: we had all these musicians to choose from but you were ready.

Has reached a point where she doesn’t know anymore where her influencer come from. Sold 30,000 albums without a label “and I keep all that money to myself. It may not be a lot to a big label but it’s a lot to me. I bought my house with iTunes.”

Playing at tech conferences has worked too. Get out of your music world. Doesn’t go to music conferences because they tend to hold to the past whereas tech conferences seem to talk about the future. I think of myself as more of a nerd than a musician some time.

Goldberg: It’s about finding what your fans like, look for someone who played music like you and emulating what they’re doing. If you’re a jam band, you’ll focus on that market…you put yourself on jamband.com. Diversification and effort.

Next thing is streaming. They’re figuring it out. Justin.tv is willing to promote bands now and you need to be there first.

Ten to Powers: You (Current TV) ARE the gate keeper buying content or collaborating with content producers.

Davis: current TV is in 50mil homes.  It’s knowing exactly the audience artists want to get in front of helps much more for authentic ideas and collaboration. We’re creating content.

Ten: How would a band get on Current TV?

Powers: We hand pick everything. Playing gate keepers and content selectors. respond to pitch: White pitched Dresden Dolls which Current put on Jimmy Kimmel—but don’t have a process for UGC.

Gate Keeper are changing every second. Keating is on suggested user list now but that’s going to go next time. Read the Tipping Point.

White: Almost everyone today knows HTML or someone who does. Family of the Year:  The base player is a web designer, another is a web designer, the other is an actress, another is an engineer who recorded everything. 6 people who are their own label.

Ten: What are some tools musicians use?

Most use Google apps. Additional tools: tunecore, tweetbeeps, bipedit

fanbridge, Iota, TopSpin, Cashmusic—developing OS platform for artists, Nimbit- bundle with Physical goods, Bandeyes, WordPress

Tips for production:

Keating: I record everything myself with a microphone and a computer.  I have one person I trust for fresh set of ears.

Ten: you can do all the recording yourself. Spend you money focusing on mastering and mixing.

Music Discovery, Sales, and Sharing: Companies Demo. Live Blogging from SFMusicTech

Six companies demo their products at SFMusicTech:

SoundHound - An iPhone app:  search music tracks by playing audio or text and get access to lyrics, videos, artist biography, albums, and purchasing options all from your iPhone. If you already own the track it’ll play full track. Integrated in the cloud and on-device music search. Can access from iPod library, launch on Pandora station, and get song idea. Partnering with GraceNote for lyrics.

 

Playdar - An OpenSource “music content resolver.” Uses common API that is service-agnostic for mapping songs to individual provisioning services like Napster, Spotify, Mog ,Raphsody. “Looks like Linux for now” but with powerful community-driven functionality.

GetPlayList –  Enables people to share playlists on the internet in an automated process. Went live today. Approved by all 4 major labels and various indie label. Makes sharing music easy.

BandCamp - A self-service platform that helps artists monetize on their art throgh better visual search, edition control, cart functionality with options relevant for artists including type of format and on-the-fly tax calculator.

LyricFind - Announcing and launching today a new Android application--free. There are 1.2 million tracks, no reliance on network. Have signed deals with 2000 music publishers. Demoing lyric song line recognition.  2.99 ad-free version also available. Content doesn’t come from publisher but from content team. Artists need to get content listed in AllMusicGuide or become listed as a publisher.

PigLightShow - Using old art in a new way to produce unique lightshows. All automated, no human operator required.

The Next Big Thing in TV and Video at NewTeeVee Live 09

This year, GigaOm’s NewTeeVee Live has explored TV Everywhere. In addition to general sessions, the conference featured 10 upcoming video startups—each providing a critical element of video and TV viewing puzzle. Five of these companies’ predictions for TV and Video are summarize below:

Elemental Technologies (Sam Blackman, CEO)

The company (elementaltechnologies.com), which is headquartered in Portland, raised 7.1M Series A funding in June 2008 and has burned $2M in 3 years with 27 employees. Customers include the CDC—the number one consumer of video, as well as Adobe and Microsoft.

Blackman’s prediction:

• Unlike other forms of media, the internet will not destroy the Pay TV business models.
• Consumers will want a high quality, seamless, video experience across multiple platforms: mobile, laptop, TV.
• People are going to be willing to pay for it to achieve the ease of use across platform that will pay for the infrastructure

FreeWheel (Doug Knopper, Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

FreeWheel helps publishers manage content regardless of where it is today or device. At NewTeeVee Live, FreeWheel announced a partnership with Warner Bros. for delivering online videos across the web.

Knopper’s prediction:

• In the $200 battle for online video—the consumer is the winner.
• Winner in this world will be 1) companies that create content and services that are new and compelling and that consumers are willing to pay for it and 2) Companies that create new value chains.
• Everyone is going to get their content in some fashion over the internet.
• TV everywhere is going to be come content anywhere.

Boxee (Avner Ronen, CEO and Co-Founder)

Boxee is announcing the release of its Beta next week in NYC, featuring a whole new user interface, social components, and the physical product—the BOX.

Ronen’s predictions are that by 2015:

• The biggest internet show is going to be bigger than the biggest TV show in terms of overall business
• More Apple subscribers for video content than Comcast subscribers
• People will watch more videos and will pay more money for them

Inlet Technologies (Matt Smith, Senior Director, Systems Architecture)

Inlet Technologies is focused on “giving users what they want.” It’s motto is: More=Better. More feeds, more camera angles, more choice, more opportunities. On Thursday, Inlet Technologies announced it has signed a deal Universal Sports to power and create a unique web experience that will replace repurposing TV and enhance the viewer’s experience.

Smith’s predictions:

• 2010 will be the year of More
• Quality will count even more
• The user will become the programmer
• Platform-specific programming will take over repurposing TV content

Canesta (James Spare, President and CEO)

Canesta provides 3D natural interfaces and gestures, powered by a single 3D sensor chip and integrated into TV experience, comparing its disruption to the way touchscreen technology changed the mobile experience.

Spare’s prediction is that the possibilities brought about by 3D gestures, interfaces, and interaction will change the way people consume content.

This post was originally written for, and published by, Ubergizmo.com—the largest privately held gadget blog in the US—now distributed in 6 languages and read in 212 countries.