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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

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

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

Except that it isn’t a two person operation, even if the full-time core consists of just myself (Allan Isfan) and my co-founder Bill Love.

There’s an army of people, some of which I’ve mentioned in the various interviews but that never seems to make it in the final edits and only my name pops up. This disturbs me because there’s a whole pile of people behind us and they deserve recognition. For you start-ups out there, this is the type of support you might need and should seek (except for my wife .. can’t have her .

Yvonne Craig is my wife of 19 years (we’ve been going out since I was big haired 13 year old punk at Quebec High School).  She supported my decision to leave Nortel to join the ultimately hyper-successful but initially super tiny Catena Networks (acquired for $476M in 2004 by Ciena:) and then supported me again when it was time to resign from a lucrative senior role and launch Isfan Solutions Inc with her and then ultimately FaveQuest. Not only that but she does all of our graphics … for nothing. She’s an accomplished artist and designer with clients that actually pay her (12 to 18 months baby … to the top).

Bill Love is my business partner and co-founder. He is amazing to work with and I’m incredibly fortunate. Super smart, easy going and when we put our heads together 1+1=3. You can’t have him either.

Allain Lalonde jumped in to help us when we got the bluesfest deal. Met for lunch, didn’t talk money “let’s just get this done”.  Are you kidding me? He works full time elsewhere and has been pitching in evenings and weekends. Quite amazing. Don’t even think about it.

Roble Ali connected with me on twitter. Volunteered to help us with the bluesfest viewtube facebook app … for no pay … just experience!

Ragaeeb Haq and Martin Cayouette are two students that helped us through the winter to build a video vetting tool (thanks to Carleton University and OCRI for sponsoring their pay!!). Ragaeeb was able to stay on with us part-time this summer and helped us build the bluesfest jukebox … again with support from Carleton.

Dave Rooney is an amazing developer and Agile Software trainer. He busted his hump for a very long time to build the initial version of our platform. We were very close to launch but got delayed (bit media company… sigh … hopefully will launch this fall). David decided to back to training and is launching his own Agile S/W training company with partners. You should ping him if you manage S/W developers. Seen him work first hand. Awesome.

Our other co-founders, who have now moved into advisory roles are Spencer Campbell and Stanley Berneche. I cannot tell you how much I learned, and continue to learn from those guys. So incredibly lucky to have met them.

Ian Hembery and Bruno Leps, two of our most involved advisers. They were co-founders of AOL Canada among many others things. Helped me grow up and got me black and blue a few times (especially Bruno … no holding back). If your advisers don’t slap you around once in while, you have to get ones that do. Also on our board of advisers are Dr. Michael Geist and Dr. Daniel Lemire and both have provided invaluable advice. Dr. Geist confirmed that there were things we could do without copyright issues and gave us some great ideas early on. Dr. Lemire, a recommendation algorithm expert among other things, strongly advised us on algorithm issues and especially to ensure we realize that reliance on such smart is tricky.

Scott Simpson, CEO of Bitheads believed in us and provided us a developer and some office space (back when we thought we need desks). Their help allowed us to build our first prototype and get the attention of a major media company. We are forever (hopefully not actually forever) indebted to them.

LaBarge Weinstein law firm took us on as clients very early on and have continued to support us for three years.  They still believe in us and put in substantial amount of support. James Smith even helped me get a consulting gig to keep the lights on. Seriously!

InMedia PR (Francis Moran et al) have been helping us with media contacts and training which is in large part why we are getting the media attention we are getting. I’ve also received great advice from Adrian Salamunovic, co-founder of dna11 (http://www.dna11.com), the dna art company (ultra super cool). We skyped while he was in California. Trust me, media is not lining up at my door.  I’m pushing hard.

Huge appreciation for Leo Lax, CEO of Skypoint Capital, and all the staff there. They took me on as an  Entrepreneur In Residence, taught me the ropes, connected me and gave me credibility. Invaluable!

Christine at RBC, for dealing with us and providing with support and credit so we could get some working capital that eventually help us secure an IRAP grant (that is now official!). Llynne Plante, Daniel Saikaley and Janice Singer from NRC/IRAP for believing in us and working on holiday and weekends to get us our grant in time!

Rolly and Yvette Renaud for constant support on many fronts, including filtering videos for Bluesfest. Susan Murphy for constant support and video she is producing for us as I post this. Mark Saunders for introducing me to Mark Monahan at the Virgin Radio launch party. Estephe Loridan, my cousin in Paris who built our favequest.com site on Wordpress (kid is a genius). My kids for their patience.

Last but not least Ottawa Bluesfest, and especially Mark Monahan and AJ Sauve for giving us a shot when we were unproven but full of ideas and passion. We are forever indebted to you. I don’t think we could possibly love a customer more!

The list of people behind us goes on and on and on. I apologize if your name is missing. I’m running on no sleep, way too much caffeine and adrenaline. I know I have forgotten someone … and I have a pit in my stomach just thinking about it.

Thank YOU all from the bottom of my heart. When you see my name in the media, know that there’s an army standing together by my side. I will not forget and don’t mess with us.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO, FaveQuest

@isfan