Web Ink Now

Check Me Out on MySpace: Social Networking Sites and Marketing

The popularity of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and Xanga is phenomenal. Social networking sites make it easy for people to create a profile about themselves and use it to create a virtual network of their offline friends and to make new friends online. According to comScore Media Metrix, MySpace had 55 million unique visitors and Facebook 14 million unique visitors in August of 2006. Of course, not all visitors to these sites create their own profile, but there are millions and millions of people who do create one to share their photos, journals, videos, music, and interests with a network of friends.

CHECK ME OUT ON MYSPACE

Marketing on these sites can be tricky because the online community at social networking sites hates overt commercial messages. Acceptable marketing and promotion usually involves an offline personality creating a page on a social networking site to build and expand an online following. It is common for members of rock bands to have a MySpace page. For example, Boston-based rock band Guster has a popular MySpace page with a network as of this writing of 92,798 friends. Another band that does a good job with social networking is The Alternate Routes. Their MySpace page has 13,465 friends.

Volkswagen has taken a different approach. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, marketers at Volkswagen created a MySpace profile page for Helga, the German character who appears in some of the company's TV commercials. Visitors learn Helga's Likes ("I love the smell of gasoline. Gears turning, oil burning, stomach churning. Go fast or go home. Efficiency") and Dislikes ("'Pimped rides,' bumper balls, people in the left lane going 40 with the blinker on. Traffic. Scorpios, you can't trust them"). You can download ringtones, images of Helga, and short audio clips in Helga's strong German accent. My favorite Helga clip: "My xenon headlights are on." I've listened to it like 20 times. The Helga MySpace page works because Helga is very clearly a made up character and she is fun. Yes, this is advertising. However, it works (she has 8,418 friends) because Helga is seen as an interesting, slightly offbeat (although made up) online character.

Yet another tactic that some smart nonprofit organizations use is to encourage employees to establish a personal page, with details of the cause they support, as a way to spread the word. Supporters of political candidates (as well as some candidates themselves such as John Edwards) create pages on social networking sites too. As with all good marketing, it is important to create content that is right for the people who you want to reach.

If you are considering a strategy to get yourself out there and onto a social networking site for marketing and PR purposes, just remember that authenticity and transparency are critical. Don't try to fool the community into thinking that the page is something that it is not. Frequent eruptions within these communities happen when members uncover a fraud of some kind, such as an advertising agency creating fake profiles for people to promote products. Yes, you can use social networking sites such as MySpace to build a following, but the approaches that bands like Guster, companies like Volkswagen, and people like John Edwards take work best; avoid sleazy fake profiles of people who supposedly use your products.

Uncle Seth and podcasts: Putting marketing back into musicians' control

Here's an interesting case study which will appear in my book The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Music is a classic example of a long tail business. Prior to the Web, bands that didn't have a major label behind them couldn't hope to get national or global attention. The best they could do was establish a local audience in a city or region or perhaps with a definable market such as North Eastern US college students. Enter podcasting. Anybody with some simple and easy-to-use equipment can set themselves up as a radio station and get instant global distribution via iTunes and other distribution services.

"Podcasters are a different breed, they're like you and me," says Jay Moonah, musician and songwriter of the Toronto band Uncle Seth. "With TV and commercial radio and MTV-type people, they work and talk from on high. Podcasting is different. It's neat that we've made fans out of some of these podcasters, such as George Smyth of Eclectic Mix. It's fun when they play our music, and then if I email them it is great to start a conversation." Moonah says that the Indie bands like Uncle Seth that take the lead with podcasting have benefited greatly through wider distribution which generates new fans.

Editorial note to music fans: The new Uncle Seth single, an upbeat cover of Joni Mitchell's classic song Both Sides, Now (available at iTunes) is killer.

Besides working with other podcasters, Moonah and Uncle Seth also host their own podcast. In each episode the band debates, discusses wacky topics, and plays exclusive tracks of their music not available anywhere else. "The interesting thing about the show is that we made a conscious effort not to make it just the music," Moonah says. "We wanted to get some of our personality into it. So we went the direction of doing things like talking for an entire show about the first records we ever bought."

"Within the last year or so, podcasting has become a real part of the social networking thing," Moonah says. "From a technical aspect, you could do podcasting a long time ago. But for us, the social aspect is really neat, bands and other organizations combine the music and the community and mix them together. For example there a community of Canadian Jam bands where we’ve met a lot of friends. Like other online communities it has a real world community associated with it."

As Moonah has honed his expertise with podcasting and musician web sites, he's developed a side business working with bands labels and other musicians on podcasting strategy. "Especially in Canada it's difficult making a living as a musician," he says. "My thing of combining the businesses into a big circle of music and consulting and podcasting really works well for me."

"I like people to understand that podcasting has so many uses," Moonah says. "It is a legitimate thing, not a toy for kids. So the advice I have for managers and label people is to not jump into your own podcast until you listen to other podcasts. Find podcasts that you like and you think might play you and submit your music to them to get going. Then think about what you want to do if you want to make your own podcast. The people who make it work are those who understand it. As a band you can compete with radio via podcasts because you can get onto several podcasts and then people will hear you several times, just like a radio rotation."

Yes, podcasting works for the music business. But it is also effective for many other industries. How about yours?

The tradeoff between technology and content

I ran across a terrific post from Andy Monfried by way of Steve Johnson. In the post You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know Monfried talks about his love of rare rock concert DVDs. He's written eloquently about the phenomenon of great content being great no matter what the technology. His example is that he collects these concert DVDs (mainly bootlegs) and he just got one of a Rolling Stones concert. Called LA Blues, the DVD is of a concert from July 11, 1975 at the LA Forum and for him it is just terrific.

Monfried argues that technology is second to content. I agree with this point. In his example, many of his concert DVDs he loves won't ever be made into High Definition re-mixed versions, but that's OK, because the content is still great.

Many people obsess over the latest and greatest technology and forget that it is the content that is important.

Imagine all the trillions of blog posts out there. Any one can be a nugget as someone researches a product or an old friend or a disease. Yet the vast majority of blog posts are only read by a few people and will never be seen in another media or technology such as a quote in a magazine or book.

Read Monfried's post. Then think about all the great content that you can produce on your site, blog and other places and imagine the people are just waiting to hear from you. And hey, your content will live on for years and decades in cyberspace for people to look at again and again.

The Alternate Routes to Web Content Success

I like writing about rock band Web sites. For one, well… I like music and am plugged into my iPod a lot. But more importantly, a rock band Web site has to be really good in order to stand out. I was recently introduced to a band called The Alternate Routes and I not only like their music, I also think the site is terrific.

These guys have developed good positioning and they write well. Here's a direct quote from the site: "The Alternate Routes are a young, dynamic rock band with a strong emphasis on songwriting and storytelling. The band, which recently released its debut album, Good and Reckless and True, was formed in 2002 when vocalist/guitarist Tim Warren and guitarist/vocalist Eric Donnelly began collaborating and found that despite different respective styles and major influences, they shared a similar vision of the songwriting process and a strong desire to develop a style that was uniquely their own. Once bassist Chip Johnson came aboard, the nucleus of the band was complete."

The Alternate Routes Web site has great content – music, photos, text, an e-mail newsletter, places to purchase the CD and merchandise, media info, tour schedule and more. All is organized very well and the design is in keeping with the style of music these guys play. They kind of remind me of the band Semisonic that had a hit with "Closing Time" a few years ago and whose drummer, Jacob Slichter, wrote the fantastic memoir "So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer's Life".

I hear a lot of whining and moaning from companies, especially in the B2B market, when they are creating a site. "It is so difficult to stand out in a crowded market," they say. "How can we differentiate?" they ask. So I say, "You think you have a difficult time, try differentiating on the Web if you're a rock band."

I think that people learn a great deal about good Web content by studying sites outside of their own market (and comfort zone). Don't obsess about your direct competitor's site – that is boring. Instead, if you are working on a B2B site, check out non-profits. Consumer e-commerce sites can learn from political sites. And everyone can pick up pointers (and good music) from a great alternative rock band Web site.

PS - Check out my post on The Rolling Stones fan site.

RollingStones.com – a fan Web site that rocks

The Rolling Stones kicked off their 2005-2006 World Tour this week in Boston. I was lucky enough to score great seats for both shows at Fenway Park (14th row for opening night and 4th row last night).

So how did a mere mortal get access to great seats without having to mortgage the house to pay a scalper? Because I had seen the Stones on the last several tours, I had automatically gotten a membership to the fans-only section of the RollingStones.com site and I registered my email address three years ago. So when the current tour was announced this Spring, I received a special pre-announcement email alert and an opportunity to purchase pre-sale tickets. How cool.

The Stones understand that their most loyal fans should be allowed to buy tickets before the general public. And the band uses the site to facilitate the process. Once the tour kicked off, the site has a neat Virtual Ticket section where you can free stuff like images, audio and video, set lists and more.

Aerosmith is another band that uses fan communities to great success. I profiled the Aeroforceone.com fan site in my book Cashing in with Content. Any organization that wants to cultivate a base of fans using the Web can learn from these two bands.

In a new twist, the Stones now allow cameras in their shows. Possibly this is because so many mobile phones have built in cameras that you just can’t stop photos anymore. But quite possibly, the band understands that when fans take photos they share them with friends and post them on blogs and photo galleries which creates a viral marketing effect.

Here’s a photo I took at the show last night. You can’t get much closer than this. Yeah, the Stones rock – but their site does too.