Editor’s note: This post is authored by guest contributor Thor Muller, a New York Times best selling author. His latest book, "Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business" is available now.
This is the story of how a young Irish fine artist accidentally became a materials scientist, founding a high-growth company that created a whole new product category.
Justin Bieber's Facebook Page
Soon you will find a listen button on pages of musical artists. This will be between the Like and Message tab on the page. Once you click on the listen button it will direct you to the track of the artist on the social music streaming sites likes Spotify, for which the artist has already signed up.
Listen button is said to be live on the pages of Justin Bieber, Linkin Park and Slash. Though we didn’t find it when we last checked. This button will be part of core set of features offered by Facebook, located at a prominent location on the page. This is not to be confused with apps that many music streaming companies have created as specialised tabs on the page or in your activity stream.
This will provide a good marketing tactic for artists to showcase their new releases or hits on the page. Quite similar to pinning the post, they can now choose which song to highlight through the listen button. Additionally, hosting songs on sites like Spotify, Earbits, MOG, Rdio, and Slacker would act as an actual endorsement for these sites. Think Justin Bieber sending all her traffic from Facebook Listen button to Spotify. This will prove to be a real game changer and influence the bulk of the referral traffic for these companies.
So, what are you listening to?
This post by me was first published at ODigMa
Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Are you? Well lets find out.
Social: Is community the focus of your social media campigns? Or are you just obsessed with getting the likes and show a bunchful of members (Read Zombieland of Facebook Likes) adorn your business page. If latter is the case then you are not ready for social media campaign. You are not old fashioned but you haven’t changed with time. Well, here is the time to start. Where to start? Try by visitng your competitors social media outposts – now check out others from your industry but in different geographies. Probably trendsetters are already leading the way. If you are a small business owner then read, learn and start experimenting. But you got to start NOW. Make an status update, let the love flow and let your community and customers know that you not only exist, you care too. Be social!
Measurable: Now that you have taken the plunge and there are two possibilities- either you are on your way to become a demi social media rockstar (slowly), or you are just lost in the SM jungle. Either way be cautious but not at the expense of sacrificing your social aspect. Try to gain some insights about your referral traffic. Find what is driving uers to your SM pages and then away. Are there any influencers you can establish relationship with? Does data point towards your core community? i.e. have you got their attention or are these just random users. Mind it, either way there is an opportunity to cash on – woe these users and develop a relationship, do not let them go.
Actionable: So you have got it started and you are begining to feel the love with all the likes, shares, comments and retweets. Good job! What now? Well, whats your USP? Think hard about it, and then go have a look at your community. Find ways through which you can customise your content so that it reverberates with your community. Keep them at the core, develop content that balances your busines goals with their interests. Remember, when being social all work and no play can have adverse affect on your social community. So, don’t hard sell. Try to co-create, crowdsource your content, learn and then redeliver. There are loads of engagement opportunities to avail. Don’t miss it!
Realistic: Be realistic, unless ofcourse you are Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga. Getting liions of fans and thousands of retweets isn’t practically possible. Size of your business plays a big role here. Your first objective should be to nuture your community, develop some brand awareness and get the conversations going. Aim to make stories around your brand which your community enjoys. If you are doing that much, you will be exhausted at the end of the day – but it will be rewarding.
Trackable: Track what you put out and not just bin it. Your links, posts, images and videos all add to your brand’s social capital. So, track that link going out, find out who retweets you and what. At the end of the day establish a benchmark for you- weekly and monthly. Compare it your efforts and find out how you are performing. Eventully its the ROI that matters based on your business goals. So, don’t forget to track your content and its effectivess. Possibly you have got your call to action wrong – how many downloaded that white paper you sent out or was that branded video which got most traffic to your website. Develop a set of metrics for yourself, without making it too complicated and geeky.
At the end of it all. Enjoy what you doing. Remember, its social media and unless you try to be social you cannot deliver.
Coming up in next post a Checklist to find out your SMART quotient.
A clip lasting just seconds was enough to put the real people of Silicon Valley in a tizzy over a Bravo reality television show tentatively titled "Silicon Valley."
The show, still in development, will chronicle the lives of five relative unknowns "on the path to becoming Silicon Valley’s next great success stories."
Echoing a grievance germinating across Google+ Circles, Facebook Timelines, and Twitter updates, Pete Cashmore, Mashable's CEO and my former boss, berated the very premise of the show.
If you have YouTube Live, here’s what you’ll see:
Wirecast for YouTube Live: This new software is free for YouTube partners and allows you to produce and stream professional-looking live events directly to YouTube from your desktop. It allows capture and switching between multiple video and audio sources, roll in of media files and images and add live effects and overlays. If you’re enabled for livestreaming, you’ll see a link to download Wirecast for YouTube in your YouTube account.
New publishing flows and real time analytics: You now have a guided flow to set up and preview live events before you go live. You can also see real time access to data like playbacks and concurrent viewers of your live streams by geography and format.
Monetize live streams: You can now monetize your live events with advertising or paid options. A live event can be claimed in the new video manager like any other video and monetized with instream ads or paid options where you can set price by country. You can see more details on this in our Help Center on ads and paid livestreaming sections.
If you’re one of the many people who’ve asked for YouTube Live but don’t have access yet, we want to thank you very much for your patience. We’ve developed these features with the expectation many more of you will eventually use YouTube Live, and like we said last year, this process takes time to roll out broadly.
Learn more about YouTube Live in the Help Center and check out youtube.com/live for everything happening right now.
I was presenting a webinar on the intersection of mobile and social with my colleague Jeremiah earlier this week, when, in the Q/A an interesting question arose, amidst the other tactical queries about partners, data points and development philosophy, this question stood out because of it's seeming simplicity and inherent complexity:
What is an "app" and how do you define it?
We used to see this a lot with MySpace hires, where new execs would come on board having never used the product.
I think Twitter's new PR Chief Gabriel Stricker is a great PR exec from my past interactions with him. But the man went through the entire interview process without ever actually having sent a tweet (here's…
Spotify continues to push the boundaries of streaming music. This morning it released the "Play" button, a widget that lets people embed songs from Spotify on any website. You need at least a free Spotify account to listen, which will no doubt help to grow the company's user base. It also means there is now a simple, legal way to bring millions of music tracks to any site.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Likes are affirmation of a users’ confidence in your brand. This comes from the content you put out, the brand value that is evident, and the special offers. All of this and more comes together to form a lively community inhabiting your Facebook business page.
However, marketplace is full of people and companies who sell ‘Likes’ for as low as $50 per 10,000 likes. Is it worth it? Of course not and we will tell you why.
These likes are from fake profiles i.e. people who do not exist. Facebook can easily know about the activity from these people of unknown identities who exist just to like your page. If you still choose this option then you risk your page getting banned for good!
These likes are of no use to your brand i.e. they won’t comment, share and like your post. It makes your brand looks bad, as if you are living in a zombieland. If you truly want to gain profit from your Facebook page and are obsessed with ROI, then its real people who matter for you. Invest time, more than money and it will pay rich dividends.
So, what’s the way out? In short, start by taking a deep look into your analytics and find what is that your customer want? Align your campaign idea with your customers’ interest and make it SMART – Social, Measurable, Action driven, Realistic, and Trackable .
If you get this right, you can steer clear of dud likes!
This post by me was first published on ODigMa
Started my career in communications, explored journalism and PR initially. Finally enjoying social media, and photography.
Recently set up this blog to share insights and opinions on social media related issues. Hopefully you will find the gateway to your information search through this alley.
I can be reached @wvishal
