If you are a festival organizer, this should leave little doubt regarding the importance fans place on your website. People use your website to make important purchasing decisions, and if designed properly, share that with their friends.

A Bit of Context

The Ottawa Bluesfest ran from July 6 to July 18 2010 and included over 250 shows. Total attendance was in the hundreds of thousands making this festival one of the biggest in North America. Some of the headliners for 2010 were Iron Maiden, The Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, Roger Hodgson, Rush, Santana, Weezer, Drake and many more. It is a big deal.

I'm not at liberty to share exact numbers but will give you the rough scale of some of the typical numbers people look at. Not all these numbers are a measure of the success of the site but they will give you a sense for the scale of traffic.

Some Numbers (all approximate)

Launch Day April 21:

We launched in the middle of the night and the site started getting visits right away. People are rabid at this time of year waiting for the band announcements. It is actually kind of crazy. Here are some launch day numbers:

• Visits: 100k
• Uniques: 75k
• Pageviews: 600k
• Videos/bios viewed: 30k
• Avg. Time on site: over 6 minutes

The majority of people were spending time checking out the Lineup and watching videos and even starting to build their own calendars. Much of the traffic came between 10am and 1pm so it was very spiky. Even though we did tons of load testing ahead of time, we didn't anticipate how spiky the traffic would be.

Luckily we had decided to host the site on Amazon cloud (AWS) and used a separate Content Distribution Network to serve up graphics.  The site got slow around 10am and we found ourselves having to quickly bump up the memory associated with the database, bumped up the size of the server and even added a second large front end server. The site quickly stabilized and we were off to the races. Now we know exactly what is needed for next year.

Overall (April 21 – July 18)

• Visits: over 1 million
• Uniques: over 500k
• Pageviews: over 6M
• Videos/bios viewed: over 300k
• Number of total events added to "my calendar": over 250k
• Avg. Time on site: ~ 5 minutes

The scale of overall numbers from site launch to the end of the festival are pretty stunning. This really demonstrates how heavily people use the web to explore festivals.

I'm happy to share more data within reason so please let me know what else you want to know … lots more important stats. For example, we have a share button that allows people to share events on Facebook, twitter or by email. Are you curious to know what the breakdown is between them? Wondering about mobile browser breakdown? Happy to share that too.

Also, we give people the opportunity to log in to the site using an existing account such as Facebook, Google, Twitter or Yahoo or create an account directly on the site. Interested in the breakdown? Results might surprise you.

Social Video Calendar: view the complete list of performances by day, by performer, by stage or by performance type. Click on the performer name or the thumbnail to read the bio or watch videos. Click on "Printer Friendly View" for a simplified view you can print.

My Calendar: when browsing the calendar, click on the "addtomycalendar" button to add the show to your own personal list of faves. We recommend you log in to the site to make sure your calendar doesn’t get lost. Logging in also allows you to share your calendar with friends!

Flexible Log In: You can create an account or simply log in using existing web accounts like Google, Yahoo, twitter or Facebook. We recommend using Facebook if you have an iPhone since you can log in to the iPhone app using your Facebook account and retrieve your calendar.

iPhone App: Version 2 of the iPhone app is out and it is super cool. Not only can you access the entire schedule, watch videos and read bios but you can also build you personal calendar or retrieve your existing calendar (if you created one on the main website after signing on using your Facebook id). The app also includes a map and very cool "Facebook Friend Finder". You can check in to many locations on site and your Facebook friends can see where you are checked in (see the blue bubbles on the map). We hope it will help you and your friends find each other more easily.

The link for the iPhone app is -> http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cisco-ottawa-bluesfest/id373439991?mt=8 but you can simply go to the app store and search for "bluesfest".

For non iPhone users, you can use the mobile version of the site: http://m.ottawabluesfest.com

Daily News: The daily news page includes contributions from the "Ottawa Tonite Street Team". They will be sharing their experience, capture fan stories and the occasional artist interview. Look for them and tell them your story. Also look for the daily "on-deck" section that helps ensure you don’t miss any of the major events going on that day. Finally we have lots of video and photos to capture the mood, show you what’s going on backstage, artist interviews, fan interviews and more.

Wi-Fi On-site: Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest has partnered with Storm Wireless and Cisco to blanket the entire site with Wi-Fi. It is entirely free. It will allow you to easily access the website, retrieve your personal schedules while also helping tell the world how much fun you’re having.

If you’ve keeping your ear to the ground recently, you may have heard about an interesting partnership between the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest and the National Gallery of Canada. I know this may seem like an unlikely pairing but read on … it actually makes sense and we were in the thick of it.

The National Gallery of Canada is launching a very exciting and  controversial new exhibit entitled Pop Life. It focuses on artists like Andy Warhol and Andy Koons that embraced pop culture and leveraged it to great success. The exhibit also includes some pretty risky 18+ content (watch the video at the end of this post and you’ll see what I mean).

Pop life may be one of the most controversial and interesting exhibits to date at the National Gallery and targets a more mainstream market. Reaching bluesfest fans made a lot of sense, especially since plans were under way to launch some music shows in the ByWard market (York Street), just a stone’s throw from the National Gallery. The byward stage was renamed Pop Life Stage on York St. as part of the whole promotion.  

Our role at FaveQuest was to integrate bios, videos and images of the Pop Life artists into the lineup function (Viewtube Social Video Calendar). We added a special tab in the lineup for Pop Life Exhibit and another for the Pop Life Stage on York St. to allow people to explore the exhibit artists as well as the free music on the York St. stage sponsored by Pop Life. The events will be automatically included in the iPhone app we’re launching imminently (developed in collaboration with Select Start Studios) and are also included in the bluesfest calendar widgets embedded in the websites of many Ottawa radio stations (ex: http://www.chez106.com/bluesfest/  ) as well as the Ottawa Citizen.

I promised you the video. This is a walk through of the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate London (be forwarded, there are some explicit images).

We built Viewtube to serve YOU. We really did … we are fans too and are trying to bend over backwards to help other fans have a great experience at the festival. We hope it will help you connect with more music and friends than ever before.

If you have ANY questions, concerns, ideas, bug reports … anything at all … please shoot an email to info@favequest.com or leave a comment on this post.

If you’re into marketing, social media and so on, we hope there are some ideas for you here. They are all yours to build on, tweak or whatever.

There’s more to our new festival platform than meets the eye, and more cool stuff on the way so read on.

Video Everywhere

People don’t like to read that much on the web, especially when it comes to live music so we put video everywhere. The home page slideshow, the lineup listing and the performer pages. Wherever there is thumbnail, there’s probably video. Our goal is to serve over 1 Million videos this year so go crazy.

My Calendar

Add your favourite performers to your calendar to make sure you don’t miss anything. To make sure your calendar doesn’t get lost, we recommend that you login … we made as easy as possible allowing you to simply login using your facebook id, twitter id, google account , or yahoo account. If you log in, you’ll get reminders as the festival approaches and you can even share you calendar with others to let them know what great taste you have.

Viewtube: on your terms (this is a big deal)

Rather than expect you to come to the bluesfest website, we exported the core lineup widget with video to other sites you might be hanging out at:

• Facebook: you can share your calendar with friends and see who is going to see specific shows (more on the way)
  • check it out and share it with friends
• Partner Websites: some radio stations and newspaper sites (announcements coming soon)
• Mobile: Mobile version of site and iPhone app coming soon

For the social media marketing types … this is critical and high value for everyone: fans get the data they need on their terms, the partner websites get something engaging and viral (more traffic), bluesfest gets more people exploring their shows … and finally, bands get more attention and hopefully more people at their shows. This is the future and the type of feature we build into our platform to hopefully make everyone happy.

Do you ever want to help but are not sure how? Do you wonder how doing good can connect back to your business (not primary reason but still good to know). If so read on.

One of the best ways to get involved in doing good is to find people who are actively doing their part. Let me tell you a story with a couple of examples.

TEDx Ottawa

Last spring, I attended #140conf … a great conference put on by Jeff Pulver about The State of Now (next one is in NYC April 20/21 … highly recommended). I met incredible change makers including Leigh Ferreira from TED. When I went back to a #140conf meetup to present a special project , a follow up meeting with Leigh convinced me to apply for a TEDx license. I knew I would get the support of the community and I was right. A small core group of volunteers … a bunch of do gooders … jumped in immediately. Not only was the conference life changing for many …. but we raised over $2,000 for low income entrepreneurs throughout the world through our Kiva TEDxOttawa team and that number continues to grow.

One small meeting that led to so many good things by connecting with the right people and the community. The relationships we made through this event are leading to crucial deals and relationships for FaveQuest.

Ottawa Tonite and the House Concert

When my friend and musician, Lindsay Ferguson, sent me a note asking me if I knew of any potential gigs for her, I knew instantly what to do. I called Cheryl Gain, the founder of  Ottawa Tonite, knowing she would help. She is super active in the arts community and is actually putting together a compilation CD to raise money for Haiti. We decided to put together a house concert at my house which is happening Friday April 9th, 2010 at 7pm. Tickets are $20 and you can bring your own drinks and snacks so it will be pretty cost effective + all money goes to the musicians. Kids get in for free.

Not surprisingly, Susan Murphy jumped in to help and also suggested we support 12for12k,This month’s charity is Boundless. Adrian Meissner from Boundless will be on hand to talk to the audience about the great work they do, and Susan will be there too to share the message about 12for12k. Bring some $ to donate if you wish.

Note that Susan was the co-organizer of TEDx Ottawa and Cheryl was a volunteer handling the main video camera at the event. One thing leads to another.

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about coming the concert, I hope this helps you decide that you should join us. You’ll have a great time, discover two amazing musicians you’ll fall in love with, meet some fantastic people that are changing the world and possibly even change your world.

Doing good doesn’t have to be a sacrifice. Connect with the right people and it can be a fun, worthy and ultimately life changing experience for you and the world wide community around you.

Join us

Let me tell you a story with five examples. I hope it helps you realize the power of your network:

1. Leaving My Job

In spring 2006, a litle after the acquisition of the startup I had poured my heart and soul into was acquired, I decided to resign from a high paying job in the pursuit of a dream. I hadn’t quite made enough to just coast and with a mortgage a self employed wife and three girls, there was certainly fear. Before I quit, three people threw me a rope … two for great consulting gigs and another offered me a role as an Entrepreneur In Residence at a VC … to pursue some startup ideas.  I took the plunge.

What would it take for you to quit your job in the next six months to pursue your dream?

2. Launching a startup

You have to be crazy to do it … and you can’t do it alone. Which means you have to find other crazy people that share the dream. Through the VC and my personal network, we were able to bring a great team together, including advisors who opened doors we had no access to. We even got a well know law firm to take us on and set up the company, stock plan and everything ….. for no money. The team has morphed over time but each and every contributor along the way was crucial.

People will do a tremendous amount of work for no pay. Believe in common passion and dream, issue some stock and dole it out carefully, keep the team tight and you will move the yardsticks farther than you think.

Do you have the guts? The desire? The "I have no choice but to do it or I’ll be miserable forever" attitude? If so, you should do it but don’t do it alone!

3. The First Customer

Ok, well the first customer screwed us over. The bigger they are, the harder they screw you. The second customer was magic. A friend brought me to the launch of a new radio station and the whose who of the business community was going to be there. He knew I would appreciate it and possibly capitalize on it. After chatting with Richard Branson at the event (yes I can prove it) he introduced me to the head of a major festival and I pitched him on the spot. Three weeks later, we had a deal and we redirected the entire company into a new space …. which turns out to be very fertile and fun.

Do you have fiends that would do that for you? You probably do … don’t be afraid to ask.

Could you create such an opportunity for someone else? I bet you can.

4. Another Customer

I remembered a chanced discussion over beers at Podcamp Montreal last year and followed up with the individual about a year later. It turns out she was connected with a key person and she stuck her neck out to introduce me. It turns out the individual was incredible, very well connected and he actually pitched us to the board of directors of a major company (he’s on the board). Can you believe that? The led to a major deal for us and possibly more. Talk about luck! Or was it?

I hope you’re starting to get the picture. As you debate your marketing plan and list of features, business model and the other such things many of us do, don’t forget that business is ultimately about people, relationships and trust. Ask for help and give help freely. That is what is going to lead to success.

I’ve left # 5 for you to fill in (I have plenty more). Do you have an example to share where RELATIONSHIPS made a substantial impact on your busines?

I miss-understood the new Blue Rodeo Album
The thing is, I was listening to this new material all wrong and it took the live show at the Black Sheep on November 4 to set me straight. Another friend (not the same one), got me a ticket to this exclusive show and it is one I will NEVER forget. The harmonies, lyrics, violin and cello, soft female voices blending with Cuddy and Keelor all conspired to beat a path to parts of my brain and my heart I’ve been too busy to pay attention to.

Some Tears
A friend who came with me sadly separated from his wife very recently was overcome with emotion when the band played “All the Things That are Left Behind”. Such a powerful song that anyone who has had to leave love behind at some point in their life (i.e. everyone) can’t help but be transported back to that time through this song.

A Deeper Journey
That’s not to say that it is all quiet and sad, but this album is substantially deeper, both in terms of the lyrics but also in terms of the vocal and instrumental arrangements. The harmonies are more dramatic and they include new voices that blend stunningly well with Cuddy and Keelor. The string section also adds emotion and draws you in deeper. This is the kind of album you could listen to in the car but do yourself a favour and listen to it with the headset on while doing nothing else. Even better, buy the vinyl and drop the needle on it like the good old days.

Note that the double album drops Nov 10. It comes as a double CD, a gatefold vinyl that includes the two CDs (that’s what I’m picking up) and of course on iTunes.

Here’s a great post from Emily Chen who was in the crowd and caught much of it on video.

Cheers,
Allan Isfan
CEO, FaveQuest

Meet Ko Kapches – aka KO

I’m passionate about live music and love to chat with and interview musicians. It is something you’ll see more of on the FaveQuest blog. It is perhaps because of this passion that a friend from Warner Music invited me out to see KO (consider this disclosure). KO is actually Ko Kapches and he grew up mostly on the street in Toronto and across the US. At the age of 14, he was a heavy drug user and even dealt the stuff. He was in and out of rehab and often ended back up on the street several times.

Thank you to Warner Music

Fast forward to last Thursday, October 8, 2009. He was playing a gig at the Live Lounge in Ottawa as an artist signed to Warner Music. Quite amazing I think and he’s not even close to being done. This guy is going places. It is hard to describe the type of music he plays … I would say it feels like urban folk. Straight ahead acoustic guitar, raw voice with a very rare groove … makes you want to move but not necessarily in a dancing way.

The only thing I would have changed is the backup music. He didn’t have a band with him and he played a recorded version on his Mac while he played guitar and sang live. I think he is strong enough to play totally acoustic … feels more real and would allow him to improvise more which is something I appreciate as a fan.

I didn’t get much of a chance to talk with him as he had to go back to Toronto that night for a video shoot the next morning. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to talk to him next time and share more of his story with you. In the meantime, check out the video I shot below  and check out his site http://ko-nation.com.

Have you heard of Ko before? What do you think? What do you want me to ask him if I get a chance to sit with him? Bring it!

OK, done? Perfect. Let’s go.

Chick peas straight out the can

I’m not big on eating chick peas straight out of a can or cuddling with many pounds of electronics in a van all night.

I’m referring to a story told to me recently by a live music venue owner who has connected with thousands of bands, most of them undiscovered but absolutely fantastic … bands that came in with low expectations and blew people’s minds with what they did on stage. This is how one amazing band lived … eating chick peas straight out of the can, and living in their van from town to town, sleeping with all their gear, partly out of financial necessity and partially to protect their gear. I think we as a social media community can help great musicians find their audience and we’ll all be better for it.

Social Media ROI for musicians

The difference between musicians and many larger businesses is that for these guys, it is not about whether to spend $100k on traditional media or $100k on social media. They have no money beyond a bare subsistence and maybe enough to record a CD, get some t-shirts printed and travel by car and van from venue to venue. I think social media can make the difference between continuing in this mode of operation and making it big. This kind of Social Media ROI is very exciting because it can be the only marketing tool these guys have, and most of it is free.

A Real Life Example: Silver Creek

Let me introduce you to Silver Creek, a local Ottawa supergroup. These guys are the real deal … all professional musicians … and any of the guys could lead their own band (in fact, a few of them are in multiple bands). They self released an LP and recently an EP entitled follow the sun (look for it in iTunes). They played on the big stage at the Ottawa Bluesfest just before Blue Rodeo and got rave reviews from the crowd and media. They play all over Ottawa and have done some mini tours, including a 30 day, 30 gig stretch in western Canada last fall. They’re about to go another tour late November around Winnipeg.

First Tip: Create outposts and bring everything together in one place

Silver Creek has a myspace page and a facebook page and some videos on youtube but they are not well set up to have their web presence drive business … more gigs, merchandise sales and so on. I have offered to help them build out their complete web presence and hopefully grow their fan community. The high level strategy is to clean up their existing outposts (MySpace & Facebook), extend more effectively into Youtube, add Flickr, Twitter, Animoto, DEQQ and iLike to the tool box and pull it all together with a blog based website. Much of the focus will be on fan interaction and getting their growing legion of fans to help them break through to the next level.

In my next series of posts, I’ll be sharing the more detailed strategy and then doing deep dives into each major social media outpost (youtube, flickr, twitter, animoto, DEQQ, iLike and so on). I would love to hear what tools you have found to be particularly useful and I’ll add these to the blog series if it makes sense. Feel free to provide links to other blogs and sites which include great resources for musicians.

And finally, here are some videos of the band Silver Creek.

When I was asked to join a SXSW panel entitled “Prove it: Exploring Social Media ROI for business“, I thought “why don’t we eat our own dog food?”.

I proposed to the moderator, Keith Burtis, and the team ( Amber Naslund,  Sue Murphy, Jay Berkowitz, CEO of 10 Golden Rules 10 Golden Rules Blog and Justin Levy) that we loosely collaborate on  a mini social campaign to get some votes. We all initially tweeted the links to the SXSW panel picker but I also proposed we create some content (blog, video, slideshare …). The team chimed in with some great ideas and we proceeded to write some blog posts on the SM ROI subject and then promoted them through our networks on facebook, twitter, linkedin and so on.

Where did my traffic come from and how many people clicked on the panel picker outgoing link?

This is a very small experiment with a clear goal: get votes.

To learn from this, I also wanted know:

-which of my social networks drives the most traffic to my site for specific campaigns

-how does this compare to non social media traffic drivers

Keep in mind that the sample number is small (under a thousand visits in a couple of days) and this example is very specific to a particular situation.  Before sharing the results, here are my personal reach numbers:

-Facebook: 258 connections (I try to keep this small)

-LinkedIn:516 connections (I mostly connect with people I know)

-Twitter: 1386 followers (prefer high quality followers)

An now, here are my sources of traffic from google analytics (approx %) on the days I posted and promoted my SM ROI blog post:

-direct (i.e. people go directly to favequest.com). 50%

-twitter: 17%

-other blogs: 14% (mostly other people on panel + my other blogs)

-google: 6%

-delicious.com: 4%

-facebook: 3% (exclusively from me promoting through my status update)

LinkedIn (simple stats update) barely registered. @allain thought stumbleupon was going to win (didn’t even show up).

Ultimately, about 5% of the visitors voted.

DO NOT READ TOO MUCH INTO THESE NUMBERS and keep in mind that the sample size is small and very specific to my experiment. Nevertheless, I think the following observations are worth making:

-surprising small number via google (lots of possible reasons for that and worth investigating, focus on selecting keywords, better tags, better SEO … )

-our traffic spiked dramatically when the post was published

-communities you are active in will provide substantially more traffic (duh … I know) but it goes to show that being active in social networks can drive traffic to your site in an honest manner

-having the support of the community is absolutely HUGE (I attribute much of the traffic from twitter to retweets from my panel members and others, rather than just my direct followers)

-creating content that has value for that community pays off …. instant spike in traffic

-can sometimes be easy to correlate a social media action to a result … write a great post + support of key people and just watch your site traffic spike upl

-5% conversion (people clicking on SXSW panel picker link) was much lower than I expected but the reasons can vary significantly (didn’t put link in the right place etc … worth investigating)

-I can’t explain why such a large percentage is direct traffic. There was clearly a very sharp spike in our traffic when I launched the post and I didn’t promote it anywhere in the media?

The ultimate point of this post is to demonstrate a simple example where there is a clear goal (drive people to our SXSW panel picker to get votes), put together a specific campaign, launch and track what happens carefully. You may be able to determine what worked and what did not which will help you make better decisions in the future.

I’m also hoping you’ll share some of your own experiences and even data. I’m convinced social media is driving an increasing amount of high quality traffic but I want to PROVE IT!

Don’t forget to vote for our panel here: Prove it: Exploring Social Media ROI for business“. I’m watching you

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest