If you’re in Hell …. Keep Going

I’m not sure who to attribute the “if you’re in hell … keep going” quote but once in a while, you meet someone who has actually lived it. It is a good reminder to anyone going through a tough time …. it is possible to come out the other side.

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!

Social Media for Musicians – Part 1

Before I get going, I would like to refer you to the new shiny email registration function just to the right. I’ll wait right here while you go over there and register so we can connect better. waiting …. waiting … waiting …

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.

ROI on our SXSW campaign – interesting numbers

Some Metrics from SXSW Social Media ROI panel campaign

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

Happy Customer = Good, More Social Media ROI thoughts

Holy huge crowd batman

“Have you noticed how happy people are here”?

My business partner said this to me several times as we would stroll through huge crowds at the Ottawa Bluesfest this year. He was so right … people were there, many with their friends or families, really soaking it all in with a smile on their face. They looked genuinely happy.

It is easy to get lost in web tools, numbers and ROI equations and miss the real point. Live events are ultimately about bringing small and large communities together around a common joy, in our case live music. The pleasure comes just as much from being with friends and family in a lively and exciting atmosphere as it does from the music itself.

Happy Customer = Good

Happy customers come back and they bring their friends. You don’t need metrics  to know it is true. There are many ways to make people happy and social media could be part of the mix.

When we began talking about new elements to the Ottawa Bluesfest site, the predominant focus was to build something that would help people enjoy the festival even more (300 bands, hundreds of thousands of people … doing ok … but still). The idea was to add elements that would allow people to make better decision so they wouldn’t miss great acts, especially ones that they had not heard of. Answer the “who the heck is that” question, a well known problem.  In addition, music festivals are social events … people go together and part of the joy is to share a beautiful experience with people you like.

Not Just About Selling More Tickets

The “Buy Tickets” button is present but was never a priority and we didn’t even get measured against “Buy Tickets” clicks (though we counted them of course . This really surprised me and I was reminded of a valuable lesson:

“It is not about YOU! (the company/brand)”

There a few exceptions to this (musicians, charities …) but not many. Connect them with music they like, connect them with their friends, give them a voice, let them contribute … let them be part of something bigger and feel special. By all means, make sure the buy tickets button is easy to find but don’t let it get in the way.

Since we’re huge live music fans already, we did a bunch of things we thought would make fans happy:

• aggregated bios and videos of all the acts so even a child could check out a band they had never heard of
• helped people invite their friends by providing them an “invite friends” function
• provided ability to create a personal calendar and share that calendar with friends (email, post on Facebook …)
• allowed fans to see which performers their friends were going to (Facebook app function only)
• allowed them to contribute by sending videos and pictures that included on the site for all to see (people love to see their stuff highlighted)
• interview fans and post the written or video interviews
• live tweet and post pics of behind the scenes stuff (backstage, while the KISS stage was being assembled …). Lots of people felt like insiders. I got suspended from Twitter for a couple of hours likely for overtweeting
• interview performers somewhat on the fly and post the interviews as much as possible
• when we realized it was very time consuming to go through each of the nearly 300 acts one by one, we built the Bluesfest Jukebox so you could just listen for hours and pluck out bands of interest
• let people do as much as possible without creating an account but provided them extra value for registering only if it made sense

Many of these ideas came straight from Mark Monahan, the bluesfest executive director (the guy at the top) btw. The guy making the decisions and approving the cheques (checks for you American folks).

I’m really sharing the thought process with you to make a few key points:

• the customer comes first. Love them and seek to provide them value  first and foremost
• be sure to monitor and listen to make sure fans actually love what you are doing
• Social media tools, like the ones we used and built, can be a substantial, cost effective way to make your customers happy
• Clean bathrooms are important (not everything is about social media)

Love Your Customer!

By all means measure and tie whatever you can count to business imperatives… we do that all the time … but don’t forget the key imperative is to make your customers happy. Everything comes after that.

What are you doing in social media to make customers happy? What has worked and what hasn’t. You have the stand, please share …. I’m sure you have some great thoughts on this and experiences to share.

Please don’t forget to vote for our Social Media ROI panel at SXSW here panel picker . The panel is moderated by Keith Burtis and I’m joined by a stunning group comprising of Amber Naslund of Radian6 ; Sue Murphy of Jester Creative; Jay Berkowitz, CEO of 10 Golden Rules 10 Golden Rules Blog and Justin Levy New Marketing Labs. Be sure to check their posts on this very topic … you’re guaranteed to learn something valuable.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

Two ways to generate and measure Social Media ROI

Social Media Return on Investment (ROI)?

Yes indeed!  It exists! Whoohoo!

ROI is tricky to prove without in any situation but there is hope. The first trick is to determine what you are trying to achieve. What is the return you are after? What is the objective? Who are you trying to reach? If you’re doing this on behalf of a customer, it is crucial to understand their end goal but also the interim things that drive their business towards their goal (web traffic, time on site, loyalty …).

Some context: Ottawa Bluesfest

FaveQuest was tapped to expand the Ottawa Bluesfest web property in 2009 by including social media integration (youtube, flickr, facebook …).  The festival people are incredibly sharp … they know what drives their business and we worked hard towards very specific goals. Based on that experience, here are my two ways to generate and measure Social Media ROI.

# 1: Social Media drives Loyalty, Loyalty drives Business

Bluesfest organizers drive a significant number of sales through their Insider’s program. They know this because the initial marketing campaign is focused on this insider group and they can measure the direct impact on sales, with members of this group buying tickets months before the actual event.

One of our goals was therefore to grow the insider list with quality people by providing music fans with real value and incentive to register … no tricks. By registering,  they could access their personal calendar from anywhere, share it with friends, get schedule updates, invite friends and much more.

Many thousands of people registered … far more than expected … and this will drive increased business next year. Because they joined as fans, rather than things like “join to win an ipod”, they are true very highly qualified leads.  Onto #2.

#2: Virality: Social media allows fans to carry your flag

A powerful alternative to traditional advertising is to have your existing fans carry your message for you. Give them the proper fun, interactive tools that benefit THEM and they will spread your message to their friends. They become fans and tell their friends and so on. Friends are the most trusted sources of recommendations by the way. Not advertisers, not journalists. Friends!

Upon launch of the Bluesfest site in April (festival is in July), tens of thousands of people hit the site within hours. On top of this, tens of thousands loyal fans could be reached via email through the insider program and other programs. This represented and huge army of fans that could spread the Bluesfest message. And they did.

I’ll share with you some of the details of the solution we implemented in the next post. Suffice it to say that nearly all interactions were measurable. We know how many people watched band videos and clicked +AddToMyCalendar.  We know exactly how many events showed up in Facebook newsfeeds and how many people likely saw them. We know how many people were invited to attend events through the +InviteFriends button. This may not be PROOF but it is certainly much more measurable than an add in traditional media and it can be substantially more cost effective.

Social Media ROI, the hard questions

The question ultimately is not “does social media have benefits?”.  The question is “do I get more bang for the buck?”. If I divert $20k from traditional media to social media, will I get the equivalent of $40k worth of results relative to traditional media for reaching on-line audiences? Or perhaps “can I drop my $100k traditional advertising budget to $20k with a strong social media component and not impact my business in a negative way?”.

I can’t share the exact numbers (yet) but in many cases I analyzed, including our own, the answer is a resounding YES. You can get way more bang for the buck if you do social media right. For the mere cost of the social utilities and some legwork, tens of thousands of fans involved their friends and it was all measurable, highly successful and loyalty was built along they way which pays off for years to come.

I’m very grateful to be included in a SXSW panel proposal on this very topic.  The panel is moderated by Keith Burtis and I’m joined by a stunning group comprising of Amber Naslund of Radian6 ; Sue Murphy of Jester Creative; Jay Berkowitz, CEO of 10 Golden Rules 10 Golden Rules Blog and Justin Levy New Marketing Labs. Be sure to check their upcoming posts on this very topic … you’re guaranteed to learn something valuable.

This panel is going to rock but of course, it will only actually happen if you vote by clicking here panel picker .

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

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Biz@Night – Allan Isfan Interview

Biz@Night – Allan Isfan Interview (link to download)

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