Displaying posts tagged as "brands"

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COACHELLA Line Up

The festival — which runs 4/12-14 and 4/19-21 — will feature appearances from Wu Tang, Blur, Phoenix, RHCP, the Stone Roses, Band Of Horses, Tegan & Sara, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, and many more. Share your thoughts on the initial line up on Twitter – @RTAJennifer

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Category: Bands, Event, Music, Party, Twitter
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The Definitive Guide To Facebook For Musicians

Below is an amazing article from Hypebot: It is immediately relevant to Bands & Brands. I couldn’t say it better if I tried.

By Bryan Kim (@freshbreakfast), Dr. of Biz Dev at Tracksby. He personally admins 100+ musician Facebook Pages with a combined following of 35M fans and blogs at Trackswell.

Facebook is the largest marketing channel for most musicians and bands. Surprisingly, it’s also the one they know the least about. So in this guide, we’re going to breakdown why Facebook is important, how it works, and most importantly, the specific steps you can take to make Facebook work for you and your fans.

Artists, you can’t be blamed. Many of you developed your social networking habits on Myspace, Twitter or YouTube. These platforms are (or were) a lot more straightforward than Facebook. In most cases you post it, forget it, then maybe check the #s later. Not only do these inattentive social media habits fail on Facebook, they can actually hurt you in a very quantitative way

Furthermore, Facebook largely ignored music for most of its existence. By the time Facebook introduced musician/band pages and artists started amassing an audience there, musicians got dropped into an unfamiliar, fully-formed social networking culture – without any sort of learning curve, burdened with the behavioral baggages of outdated social networks.

But Facebook is really not that hard. And if done right, you have a lot to gain. By numbers alone, there are more people that regularly sign into Facebook than Twitter + Myspace + YouTube combined. So it’s really important now more than ever to optimize your Facebook presence.

EdgeRank: What It Is, Why It Matters

Before we get into actionable tips, we need to familiarize ourselves with the concept of EdgeRank.

EdgeRank is the name of the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine how often your content appears on a user’s news feed. This is key. Most of your fans don’t explicitly visit your artist page, so the only realistic chance of reaching them on Facebook is to appear on their respective news feeds. This is essentially what counts for “distribution” on Facebook.

EdgeRank’ algorhithm determines what a user will see on their news feed. It attempts to filter out all the crap that gets shared on Facebook, and tries to predict what any given user will actually want to see. To any given fan, your musician/band page is competing with thousands of other friends, pages and other objects to grab their news feed real estate.

So how does EdgeRank determine if your Facebook post is news feed worthy? One word: ENGAGEMENT. You need your fans to like, comment and share your Facebook posts. Anytime one of your fans engages with one of your posts, they’re more likely to see your following posts. Conversely, if a lot of your fans engage with your status update in the first few moments it’s posted, fans who sign into Facebook later are more likely to see it on their news feed. So early engagement on a post can be proportionately more important.

Have you noticed how your most liked posts end up getting the most impressions? Exactly.

There’s a lot of ways EdgeRank slices many factors that affect your news feed distribution. If you’d like to dive into the specifics of EdgeRank, google it and you’ll get a wealth of detailed articles, like this, this, and this.

No matter how facebook slices it, your actionable instruction remains the same: GET MORE ENGAGEMENT! Get those likes, those comments, those shares. Make it your main goal with Facebook. These engagement points build on top of itself, ensuring better and better distribution on news feeds over time as your engagement improves. It’s something like a credit score for your Facebook page, and the algorithm lends you more impressions the better you perform.

Now that we’ve established the importance of getting good engagement on Facebook, let’s dive into art of actually doing it. Here’s how to get Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm to work for you…

Continue reading the rest of the story on Hypebot

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Category: Bands, brands, Content, Facebook, marketing, Music, Online, Social Media, Web
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Brands Can Now Turn Their Facebook Timeline Into a Movie

People managing a Facebook Page can now easily create a movie using photos, videos and status updates from their brands’ Timeline.

Timeline Movie Maker from marketing agency Definition 6 spits out a chronological, one-minute clip after the browser tool “parses nostalgia,” “captures your good side” and “finds I-Remember-Whens” on your Timeline.

Users can customize the movie, picking from a selection of music and replacing any visual element. Admins also can write status updates or messages to sprinkle throughout the video.

Definition 6 collaborated with Facebook on the tool, which originally rolled out in January for everyday Facebook users before becoming available this week for Page administrators.

“Timeline Movie Maker was a great way for people to share the stories of their lives in a creative way,” Paul Hernacki, CTO at Definition 6, told Mashable. “We wanted to bring that experience to brands, further connecting brands with their fans.”

To make a movie, a brand’s Timeline must have a least 50 public photos. The tool now supports nine languages other than English (Italian, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Brazilian, Portuguese, Turkish and Russian) and lets users change the text when they share their creations on Facebook.

Definition 6 has no plans to make the videos embeddable. They can be shared only to Facebook.

Full instructions on how to use Timeline Movie Maker are available here.

 

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Category: Apps, brands, Design, Digital, Facebook, Online, Social Media, Video
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Cola-Wars continue.. in the Social Arena

 

I’ve paid a fair amount of attention recently to Pepsi’s increasingly dominant presence in the social media sphere – without any mention of Coke or how they’ve planned to compete. The most recent arena for the age old ‘cola wars’ is social media and below is the run down of the competition – inclusively.

With their launch of Pepsi Pulse, a pop culture destination on Pepsi.com, Pepsi is aiming to be a major player in conversations on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The weight of this should be obvious to all of us but and is to no one more so than their rival Coca-Cola.

As a response, Coca-Cola is partnering with social-music site Spotify to compete for the online or ‘social’ cola authority by beefing up their own online presence and engagement with the social media world. Spotify’s music-streaming player will be integrated into Coke’s 41-million strong Facebook page. Also in the works: a Coke app on Spotify’s service.

Pepsi and Coke are among a multitude of brands investing in social media’s ability to provoke more meaningful customer interaction.Consumers are 55% more likely to recall ads that include social-media components than non-social ads, according to a 2011 Nielsen survey. “Consumers are incredibly empowered, and what used to work to get their attention now needs a bit more thoughtfulness,” says Brian Solis, principal analyst at the Altimeter Group and author of The End of Business as Usual.

Both brands will obviously continue to invest in above the line campaigns but  as Mr. Solis himself says, “The future of branding now comes down to experiences more than ever”.

Pepsi Pulse will host a real-time top 10 pop culture ranking, and regular chances for consumers to engage with celebrities. Nicki Minaj, for example, might urge fans to share pictures of their alter egos to create an online photo album, says Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages.

Use of the Twitter hashtags “#LiveForNow” and “#Now” would reflect Pepsi’s new “Live for Now” campaign theme. Those celebrity challenges, expected to occur as often as weekly, “are all about inspiring and getting consumers to live in the now,” Singh says. “This is about integrating into pop culture in a meaningful way.”

Pepsi has enlisted social-media optimization company SocialFlow to do the real-time analysis of pop culture conversations on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. Its’ findings will be used to create the pop culture ranking. Consumers can find the ranking on Pepsi Pulse, along with current pop culture coverage and stories that are generating buzz.

Coke is looking to Spotify to help it build on its Coca-Cola Music program, which last year included a 24-hour interactive studio session with Maroon 5.

“We want to … have a sustained conversation around music with our consumers because it is an everyday passion point for them,” says Joe Belliotti, director of global entertainment marketing for Coca-Cola. Coke and Spotify plan to increase their impact during London’s Olympic Games this summer. You’ll see Spotify references on Coke packaging. Through the decades, Coke has sponsored radio programs and live concerts.

“This is just the next chapter in that evolution where you take the product and the services and social ability of Spotify and bring it into the Coca-Cola brand experience,” he says.

 

References from USA today.

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Category: Advertising, brands, Content, Facebook, lifestyle, marketing, Music, Online, Social Media, Twitter
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3 Twitter Rumors and What They Could Mean for Brands

David Clarke is CEO and co-founder of BGT Partners, a 2010, 2011 and 2012 Ad Age Top 15 Best Places to Work in the U.S. honoree. BGT creates interactive marketing and technology solutions for global corporations that strengthen brands, develop more engaging relationships and transform businesses.

With increased competition for ad dollars, Twitter is making a big push this year to become more attractive to advertisers. It has invested in a redesign, as well as brand pages, but that may not be all the social network plans to unveil.

According to a recent Ad Age report, the company is looking to add new experiences to its platform, in the hopes that the move will entice brands to spend more ad dollars.

Although Twitter hasn’t officially confirmed these rumors, it’s worth taking them seriously. See below for the three possible changes, and what each could mean for brands.

1. Open Platform

Facebook and Apple transformed their businesses by opening their platforms to third-party developers. The move allowed independent developers to create new ways for consumers to engage with brands. As a result, we now have multi-million dollar businesses built around these apps.

 

If the rumors are right, Twitter is heading in the same direction by opening its platform to developers.

An open Twitter platform would allow brands to create deeper interactions with consumers through custom experiences. This would not only be an opportunity for developers, but also for brands — especially those with strong Twitter presences. For example, if you’re using Twitter as a customer service channel, then a customer service app could potentially streamline the way you handle customer support.

That said, apps on Twitter will face inherent challenges. The Twitter stream is the main attraction, and most people don’t visit brand pages directly. Plus, popular Twitter browsers such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are built around the Twitter stream, which deals another blow to the power of brand pages. Perhaps custom apps can find a way to drive more traffic to brand pages, but it seems doubtful.

2. T-Commerce

Social commerce was hailed as the next big thing in ecommerce. Several brands developed ecommerce integration on the Facebook platform, hoping people would want to purchase while on Facebook, but it never really took off. Gap, JC Penny, and Nordstrom closed down their Facebook shops because customers preferred to shop on the main websites. This probably had more to do with the poor Facebook ecommerce user experience than with Facebook itself. Most of these early f-commerce attempts were simply developed without an understanding of how Facebook could add value to the shopping experience.

 

Now, Twitter is rumored to try its luck with social ecommerce for brand pages. Will it be successful?

Fundamentally Twitter has to succeed where Facebook failed. Twitter ecommerce, or t-commerce, has to create a significant added value to make it more compelling than shopping from a traditional web store.

“It’s likely that Twitter’s ecommerce solution will include a deep integration with Square, the mobile payment company Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey established in 2009. It’s possible that t-commerce will be a mobile-only service that uses location-based technology and one-click payments with your Twitter name. That would add significant value to Twitter’s mobile user base, especially when you consider that 50% of Twitter’s users are accessing Twitter on mobile devices.

3. Contests and Sweepstakes

Lastly, Twitter is rumored to introduce contests and sweepstakes for brand pages to create deeper brand engagement. That said, brands have been pushing contests and sweepstakes on Twitter for some time, and given the viral capabilities available with retweeting and hashtags, it will continue to happen.

 

Will an official change by Twitter be groundbreaking? Probably not, but it’s likely that these changes will allow brands to more efficiently manage and execute campaigns on this social network.

From Mashable.com 

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Category: Apps, brands, Facebook, Online, Social Media, Twitter
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ROOFTOP Agency President, Dave Videka at CMW Panel

“Bands, Brands and Fans”

“We’ve reassembled one of our most successful panels, a collection of the industry’s most imaginative marketers and creators of some of its most memorable music-integrated promotions. They’ve made a science out of making music, brands and branded events function together, and they’re ready to put some of the most successful current brand/sponsorships under scrutiny to suss what makes them work”. – CMW

Dave Videka, ROOFTOP Agency – Panel Moderator

Nelson Phillips, Monster Energy Canada - Panelist

Kevin Campbell, Virgin Mobile Canada - Panelist

Kevin Lyman, 4Fini, Inc, & Vans Warped Tour - Panelist

Kristy Van Doren, Vans, Inc. - Panelist

Cathy Cutz, 145 Live Solutions - Panelist

Tom Jackson,Tom Jackson’s Onstage Success -Panelist

Jesse Giddings, The Much MTV Group - Panelist

 

Photos straight from Twitter in real-time. Wanna follow the discussion or check out the recap? #CMW #BandsBrandsFans

Were You there? Share your thoughts and photos with us @RTAJennifer

 

Happy CMW!

 

 

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Category: Advertising, brands, Event, marketing, Music, Social Media
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TRENDING: Twitter Rolls Out Promoted Tweets for Mobile

Twitter on Tuesday announced it was bringing Promoted Tweets to mobile devices.

The move, which Twitter had announced was coming last month, means Promoted Tweets will join Promoted Accounts on users’ mobile devices. Advertisers can also specify whether their Promoted Tweets will run on iOS, Android or other mobile platforms.

In a blog post, Twitter noted that the targeting is “great for brands who want to increase the prominence and reach of their message to a particular type of mobile user. For example, mobile game and app sellers can now pinpoint the users who are likely to purchase their products.”

Mobile users will see such tweets in the timelines of their iOS and Android Twitter apps. Promoted Tweets will appear in the timeline just once. The company claims that it will only display the Promoted Tweets in the timeline when they’re “relevant.” If the Promoted Tweet isn’t relevant, you can dismiss it from your timeline with a swipe.

Twitter was careful to note that as users scroll down their timelines, Promoted Tweets will flow with them. Users complained loudly when Twitter rolled out the “Quick Bar” — more commonly referred to as the “dickbar” — last March. The bar hovered at the top of screens as users scrolled, prominently displaying a rotating list of trends, including those paid for by sponsors. The Quick Bar was removed within a month of its release. The new version of Promoted Tweets for mobile appears to be Twitter’s more user-friendly compromise.

Twitter’s migration into mobile advertising comes as Facebook has also begun the process of integrating ads into its mobile apps.

Both are behind the curve compared to Google, which could see as much as $4 billion in revenues from mobile advertising in 2012, according to one analyst’s projection.

Advertising accounts for the bulk of Twitter’s revenues. The company generated $139.5 million in ad sales in 2011, according to estimates from eMarketer. Ad revenues are expected to grow 86.3% to $259.9 million this year.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ymgerman

By Mashable

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Category: Advertising, brands, marketing, Online, Social Media, Twitter
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