We work closely with customers, get to understand their business and develop solutions they love. The service has been the marketing and it has worked very well. The customers all come back and we grow together. We love it and they love it.

However, we were missing a great deal of the market that can't afford custom mobile solutions. Most solutions are too expensive and complex. After hearing this from many potential customers we decided to do something about it and developed MyEventApps. It allows event based organizations to get their own true native iPhone and Android apps for $750/year! We think this changes the game.

See what the Ottawa Citizen had to say this about this revolutionary product. The story got picked up all over the web including blogs and other papers like the Vancouver Sun. Our phone was ringing off the hook on Friday with interest from spas to malls and cleaning services. Things are going to get interesting.

If you wish to keep up with our story, please enter your email to the right and you'll get updates in your email when we have something interesting to share.

Ottawa Citizen, November 30, 2011

OTTAWA — An Ottawa startup is looking to democratize the business of building applications.

FaveQuest and its founder Allan Isfan has released its web-based MyEventApps program, which allows smaller businesses to create iPhone and Android apps in seconds.

To create an app for both Android and iPhone, a business needs to pay FaveQuest an annual fee of $750 …. click to read more

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

It makes a big difference when you’re a huge fan of the customer you’re doing work for. The people at FaveQuest have always loved the Ottawa Bluesfest and have countless positive memories. We’ve done our best to build tools for fans just like us and I must say, it is going very well.

We have received some very nice emails including one from a nearly blind woman,who was able to explore the bluesfest performers by using our viewtube application because of all the multimedia we included and the simple navigation.  That feels good!

Facebook app 2.0 and more!

But we’re not stopping there. Since launch we’ve added some new features like allowing people to publish their calendar so their friends can easily see what others are attending. We’re also in the process of developing version 2.0 of the Facebook application that will make it even more engaging and social.

There is more. In the next few weeks, we’ll be launching some more tools for fans to explore even more musical acts and stay up to date with daily events at the bluesfest. I can’t tell you more unfortunately but keep your ear to the ground and this blog.

It has been exciting and it is about to get even better!

Cheers,

Allan Isfan

CEO