Thursday, September 22, 2011

Facebook's "Upgrade"

multiple facebook f's image from from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
Today Facebook made some big changes. The most viewed social network is under some stiff competition and some user attrition to Google+, so they just had to do something soon before the trickle became a flood. Here's a bit of an article from Mashable that talks about the changes and has a great slideshow as well. We'll look at the specifics more next week.
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"For Facebook, it all boils down to one problem: emotion. Facebook has hundreds of millions of users and spectacular levels of engagement, but it is a platform that has lost its emotional resonance over the years. More and more people visit Facebook out of necessity rather than desire. It’s a platform people prefer to hate, but won’t leave simply because all their friends are there.

It’s a relationship gone stale. After years of dating, the magic between Facebook and its users has dissipated. It’s a natural evolution in any relationship, but now there is another suitor vying for Facebook’s users. And a lot of people think this suitor is easy on the eyes.

That’s why Facebook launched three recent changes: revamped Friend Lists, a real-time news ticker, and the subscribe button. Friend Lists lets you share content with just your closest friends (with whom you have the strongest emotional connection), and the ticker lets you have real-time conversations with your friends as soon as they do anything. Subscribe lets you fill your News Feed with people you admire and respect, fostering a different type of emotional connection.

But these changes are just the beginning. The changes Facebook will roll out on Thursday are designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook. These changes will make Facebook a place where nearly everything in your life is enhanced by your social graph. These changes will make it so you know your friends better than you ever thought you could."

I think the most significant update will be "subscribe," a feature that we'll look at in detail next week.
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

8 Tips For YouTube Marketing

YouTube discovery graphic from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
Here's an interesting post from Hypebot a while back regarding YouTube marketing. I've posted a lot about YouTube optimization, but there are a few tips here (3 and 7) that I hadn't touched on before. You can read the entire article here.

1. Post Compelling Videos on a Regular Basis. Give folks something worth looking at and a reason to return.

2. Optimize Titles and Descriptions for Findability. Important for searchers on both YouTube and search engines.

3. Create Custom Thumbnails for Your Videos. This is your first look but try to entice without misleading.

4. Use All Analytics/Metrics, Not Just Views. It doesn't matter how many views you have if they're only a few seconds long.

5. Interact With & Include Your Fans. Engage your fans in the comments and create ways to include them in your videos.

6. Collaborate With Other Artists. Working with others can extend your fanbase while leading to new ideas.

7. Create Playlists for Different Sets of Videos. Some folks will want to see behind-the-scenes, others just want finished product.

8. Brand and Optimize Your YouTube Channel. It's not just about individual songs or videos but about creating a following for your channel.
These tips were taken from the following sources, all of which have more to say as well as additional tips:
YouTube Music Marketing with David Choi
8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results
YouTube Creator Playbook
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

What's Trending @Twitter

Twitter is a big part of some people's lives, which is a story in itself, but the bigger story is how Twitter is used. Here are some interesting facts about Twitter use. Pay special attention to daily use rather than the celeb portion of the graphic.

What's trending on Twitter infographic from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Monday, September 19, 2011

How Discovery Channel Uses Social Media

Discovery Channel image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
Here's part of a great article posted on Mashable regarding how the Discovery Channel uses social media. There are a couple of points here worth noting.

First, the 4 goals of the network in regards to their social media strategy. Everyone who uses social media for business (hopefully your music is a business) needs to have a reason, and Discovery is very clear on theirs, although they're not that different from most company's goals.

The second is the fact that the company divides their social media group into two teams: an “art” side and a “science” side. I truly believe that this is an important message for anyone who hires outside help in their social endeavors. You can't depend upon the "science" team to do it for you. You've got to drive the bus and create the content, then let your web and social people do what they.

Here's a portion of the article. To read the entire article, go here.
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"Though the network launched Facebook Pages in early 2009, it’s only in the last 12 to 18 months that efforts on social platforms have been “as focused and deliberate as they are now.” Discovery is the number one non-fiction media company in the world and has a large base of obsessed fans, so the network is constantly incorporating social media as part of the overall strategy. “It’s part of everything we do, from our .com pages to our marketing plans,” Weiswasser says. “Our philosophy on social media is to use it as a platform that enhances the viewing experience and the relationship with the viewers.” She goes on to outline the social media team’s four primary goals:
  • Build relationships and engage with fans
  • Personalize the brand
  • Strengthen fan-talent relations
  • Drive tune-in
In addition to running 24 hours of programming on several channels — the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet and more — the network produces a breadth of content for the web, including individual show pages, network pages, vertical pages and blogs. Discovery owns more than 70 Facebook Pages, with a footprint approaching 43 million fans — and getting 500,000 more each week — while its 120 Twitter accounts boast 2.4 million followers. As for that inevitable ROI question, Weiswasser says, “It’s hard to deny the value of such a huge group of fans, and its hard to deny the influence of all these people who have raised their hands and said, ‘I’m interested, I’m a fan.’” The fans’ enthusiasm on social has encouraged and fostered a very direct connection between the shows and the audience.

That enthusiasm is driven by an an exciting mix of content. Since Discovery produces TV content, it’s not surprising that video is expertly-produced and resonates very well with the fans. Other content includes blog post, sneak peeks, photos from the set, personal pics from a show’s talent and links that are related to a show’s premise (i.e. geology, cooking, etc.). You’ll notice that many of the links on Facebook and Twitter go to original content on Discovery.com — the network is good at integrating and promoting its content and not treating each platform as a distinct entity, but rather as one unit with many parts that build on and enhance the others.

But Discovery also excels at posting relevant content from all over the web, which keeps the conversation going. On the What Not To Wear Page, you’ll find links to articles about fall fashion trends, and you’ll find recipes on the DC Cupcakes Page.”We serve as a curator of topics for our fans,” says Weiswasser. “Content may not have anything to do with the show, but it is relevant to our viewers.”

The overall goal is to have the best content they can — they want people coming back because the content is interesting and engaging. Weiswasser says the Discovery team wants to make content as accessible as possible and doesn’t believe in like-gating. “We want the content to speak for itself,” she says. “If it’s compelling, people will want it — that’s how we got this footprint.”

The Discovery social media team is divided into two groups — an “art” side and a “science” side. The art side is part of corporate communications and handles content and tone, focusing on engagement and interaction with fans. Basically, they deal with the words and use the social web as a focus group from which they get real-time feedback. The science side is in the digital group, and that team focuses on analytics and metrics (fans, clicks, tweets, retweets, mentions, comments), optimizing pages to drive traffic to Discovery’s web properties. Crenshaw says his team is trying to do what all media companies are attempting — to determine the correlation between ratings and social. But sometimes it’s not just about metrics –”We can tell anecdotally if social is serving its purpose,” Crenshaw says. “We’ll post about a show, and someone will say, ‘Oh I didn’t know this was on tonight,’ or they’ll tweet asking what show to watch and we’ll tell them ‘MythBusters.’” The digital team also uses social media to identify and prevent crises, which can bubble up through Twitter and Facebook and be addressed and quelled before they become major blunders."
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Consumers Prefer Ownership To Streaming?

music circle image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
A new study by the Insight Research Group and commissioned by eMusic that took place in August 2011 came up with some very interesting results.

Despite the inroads of Spotify, Rhapsody, Grooveshark, the various cloud music services, and a whole host of other streaming services, the study contends that music consumers would much rather own their music than stream it.

Here's what they found:

-- 91% prefer to own music because it allows them to listen as many times as they want

-- 89% prefer to own the music they like, rather than stream it

-- 86% feel that ownership gives them security that their files will not disappear

-- 76% use streaming to discover music that is new to them, before they decide whether or not to buy

--74% will stream music for free, but wouldn't pay to stream

-- Only 13% pay to stream music online; 84% of consumers who pay to stream also purchase digital music files

-- 79% do not think they will ever give up owning music and just stream it online

-- 39% will store digital music files they own in a cloud-digital locker, so that they can listen to them anywhere

-- Only 14% will increase their use of paid streaming services

Now the first thing about this study is that it was commissioned by eMusic and they're a music retailer. It's in their best interest to have these kinds of results to keep their customers buying and the record labels and artists supplying to them. The second thing is that we're just on the event horizon of the streaming revolution. Come back and do the same study next year at this time and let's see the results then.
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

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