Greg Rollett runs a music marketing company from his laptop in Orlando, FL. He is an advocate of the New Music Economy and very hopeful that artists can still live the rock star lifestyle in the digital age. Connect with Greg on Twitter, @g_ro.
Today’s musicians, both mainstream and indie, are using social media to connect with fans, build anticipation, and generate revenue in new and unique ways. The products range from singles to mix tapes to digital six-packs, even oddly shaped USB sticks, vinyl, and the occasional traditional album.
But how are these artists reaching their new fan bases online through social channels? Much like the business world, social media promotion for musicians is still a very new game, with no exact recipe for platinum success.
There are however, some innovations being put forth, and a new connection is being formed between artists and fans — a connection that empowers both to give each other what they are looking for.
We have all heard about the success of micro lending organizations like Kiva, which use multiple small payments to contribute to a larger goal. The same process is being applied to creating an album or a music-based project.
One such project is the Washington D.C.-based indie hip-hop group Panacea. The producer/MC duo listed their project on Kickstater, a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers, and others.
The project was posted on the morning of February 26th. According to Jeremy Calvery, the group’s Director of Digital Media and Promotion, “We were at $1,000 before the end of the first day. We had to increase the number of $200 packages from three to five over the weekend because people were e-mailing and literally begging for the chance to ‘buy’ the whole back catalog. Less than five full days from the first e-mail to the list, we had reached the funding goal of $3,800, which was set to be just a bit more than what the minimum press of 250 vinyl copies was going to cost.”
Another hip-hop outfit, the Get Busy Committee, also launched a project on Kickstarter. In their drive to raise $3,218, they included one premium pledge level at $1,000 — an investment that netted the donor a song about him or herself to be included on the record, as well as a platinum plaque. They sold this spot within 24 hours.
Another approach musicians are taking is the use of web video series. Indie pop artist Mike Posner has been telling his story over the course of a video series titled “One Foot Out The Door.” Daniel Weisman, Mike’s manager, stated that he was attempting to create an income stream for Mike while he was finishing college and working on his debut album.
Daniel and his management company Elitaste were approached by the shoe company Puma about integrated artist campaigns. Puma ended up sponsoring Mike’s last semester in college, and provided a camera crew to follow him from classes, to the studio, to shows all over the country.
Daniel wanted to do something special for the Mashable readers when I reached out to him, so fresh off the upload, here is the premier of Episode #10 of “One Foot Out The Door.”
Live streaming has also been worthwhile for big announcements. Underground artists the Kottonmouth Kings turned to Ustream to tell their fans all about their new album and when they could expect it in local stores.
The video was watched live and formatted like a press conference, with fans getting the chance to ask questions and share their feedback. It was a smart way to bring their fans into the experience and give back to the community that has supported them for 10+ years.
Rob And Kal are a pop/rock act from the UK who are taking fans inside their studio and the music creation process. They call it Mubla 2.0, which Rob defined as “our interactive recording project where we come up with song ideas and you help us develop them with your comments, suggestions and musicianship.”
So far they have five songs in progress with fans like Adam saying, “I just feel the intro has a little too much going on and 2.33 to 2.56 I almost want the piano to play and pull at the heart strings.” Another commenter named Russell gave tips like, “Think drums and a bit more of heavier guitar would go down nicely particularly near end.”
This concept empowers fans and gives them a product they feel responsible for and connected to. The project can only strengthen the bond between fans and artists, and result in an easier sale when the time comes to release an album.
Glasses Malone, a new artist signed with Cash Money Records, is turning to bloggers to get the word out about his new album “Beach Cruiser.” What makes his campaign unique is that unlike traditional artists who look to get their tracks on highly trafficked MP3 blogs and review sites, Glasses and his team are focused on adding value to bloggers whose primary focus is not on music.
A marketing rep for Glasses told me, “These bloggers are more open to running contests and integrated campaigns than traditional music bloggers because they are not accustomed to being pitched by a major label artist. We have found blogs that love unique and fresh content that will separate them from their peers and competition, and it is working out very well for us so far.”
Armed with a research team, they have been targeting biking blogs, college blogs, beach lifestyle sites and more, all with the hope of driving new traffic to Glasses’ site and generating some pre-album buzz.
No matter what the labels and corporations are doing, musicians are taking it upon themselves to use social channels to connect with fans, offer value, and create relationship. This has ultimately led to new business models and revenue streams from sponsorships, touring and live appearances, custom products, and social monetization through advertising.
What are your expectations from artists in today’s music industry? What other unique social media promotions have you seen from your favorite musicians? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, karimhesham
Tags: bands, BLOGS, music, record labels, social media, ustream, video, Vimeo, web video, web video series
Whenever I hear any variation of the phrase “Everyone is unique”, I cringe. Despite what most people may claim to believe, I do not find this statement to be true. It’s just something that people say to make boring people feel better about themselves. I suppose that everyone is technically different, but that hardly makes everyone unique. I define being unique as being memorable and worth talking about (and preferably in a good way).
To me, following the same trends and fashions because everyone else is doing it does not make one unique. When I’m trying to get to know someone, I hate when I ask what kind of music he listens to and he replies “Everything”. Really? Really, dude? Everything? Way to go out on a limb and stick out. “Everything” is the least unique answer anyone could ever give.
I understand that things become popular for a reason — a great mass of people can relate to them. But when you never step outside the realm of popularity, you become very uncool.
This is something that applies to the business world as well. If you’re following the same trends as others in your industry, how can you expect to stand out? When you cease to be innovative and gutsy, you cease to be unique. What if Google had decided to play it safe and do things more in line with what other search engines were doing? You’d still be hopping between Yahoo! and AltaVista (Why would we do want to do that? Google is awesome!)
Part of being unique is having a passion for something.
Don’t read a book just because it’s a classic. Read it because it interests you. Don’t be afraid to pick up American Psycho instead of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Don’t buy that Beatles CD because everyone tells you that they’re the best band of all time. If you think they suck, then they do. And in my world, they do!
Do you really want to be just like everyone else? The majority of people are boring. All too often, I catch myself meeting the same person over and over again in different people. But every once in a while, I meet someone who’s truly one of a kind. And that’s the kind of person who is memorable and worth talking about (and in a good way).
When you’re afraid to be unique, you are afraid to brand yourself. And right now, that’s the last thing you need to be afraid to do.
Worth a read as always.
We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers. Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity. Moreover, that liquidity will be constantly refreshed by a gusher of earnings from our many and diverse businesses.
When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant. At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help. Of that, $9 billion went to bolster capital at three highly-regarded and previously-secure American businesses that needed -- without delay -- our tangible vote of confidence. The remaining $6.5 billion satisfied our commitment to help fund the purchase of Wrigley, a deal that was completed without pause while, elsewhere, panic reigned.
We pay a steep price to maintain our premier financial strength. The $20 billion-plus of cash-equivalent assets that we customarily hold is earning a pittance at present. But we sleep well.
Here's to sleeping well.
Tags: berkshirehathaway economics finance Warren Buffett
If you’re looking to download a Kaspersky Labs app for your iPhone, then you’re out of luck.
Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Labs, claims that Apple is blocking his company’s attempts to bring a third party security suite to the iPhone. Kaspersky says that despite being in contact with Apple for two years about this project, Apple will not allow them to use the iPhone’s SDK to develop a mobile security program like it has developed for Symbian and WinMo phones.
Is Apple’s heavy-handed approach here putting customers in jeopardy?
Not quite. Kaspersky himself acknowledges the minimal risk of a virus infecting an iPhone saying that the odds of this happening are “almost zero.” However, Kaspersky claims that the product he would want to develop would be more focused on data security. With the iPhone’s meteoric rise in the business world, such security is becoming more and more important, he says.
“Are you OK to lose your address list?” Kaspersky asked. “I’m not. It’s a risk to lose the data. Anti-theft is a major component of our software.”
Kaspersky’s complaints also address a persistent issue with the iPhone: Apple’s draconian app approval process. Despite attempts to shed light on the process, it still remains a shadowy and subjective thing. Kaspersky said, “I don’t want to say Apple’s is the wrong way of behaving, or the right way. It’s just a corporate culture – it wants to control everything.”
While the usefulness of Kaspersky’s product may be slightly dubious, Apple’s refusal to work with a respected developer like Kaspersky is equally unsettling. While it’s understandable that Apple wants to keep certain things in-house, the fact that it won’t give Kaspersky the SDK while it will give the SDK to the iFart guys is patently absurd. Frankly, Apple needs to rectify this, and work harder to make sure trusted developers don’t have to walk over hot coals to develop for their platform.
Welcome to the latest Nitty Gritty Heart interview dealing with the intersection of heart and spirituality and the world of business.
Here’s where you can read about the inspiration and hear the debut interview with Pam Slim.
The intention is to help people integrate their sense of spirit and the business world, and to do it in a way that honors the details and numbers that businesses need to function, and honoring the non-linearity and non-logical wisdom that sometimes comes through the Divine.
Matthew Ray Scott is a former army officer, successful entrepreneur, a devoted father. He’s also here in Portland with me, so it’s a delight to be able to meet him for tea from time to time.
I knew I wanted to interview him when, during tea one day, he told me that his company never plans more than six months in advance, and does what strategic planning they do from a place of intuition and what “feels right.” Strange words perhaps from an extremely successful marketer who knows how to get the numbers and details lined up with extreme effectiveness.
He’s got quite a story to tell about his own journey with spirit and business, and I love how he describes where he landed. Plus you’ve got to hear his story about his father.
The interview runs about 30 minutes.
Option- or Right-click to download.
Matthew’s blog is a delightfully entertaining way to learn about marketing and business, mainly because of the extremely creative way he brings video into it. I’m jazzed that I have tea with him where he’s going to show me some of his video tricks..
Listening to the interview, what did you learn about your own journey with your own nitty gritty heart?
"Publishers should have more balls, they should have more confidence about what they're doing," is how Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com put it.You would think that someone working for a savvy business publication, like the FT, would offer a bit more in the way of strategic detail. Confidence alone doesn't change the market position. I agree that if they put their mind to it, others can come up with compelling products that people will pay for -- but these have to be products of scarce value. The FT has mostly been able to do this with good financial/business content, but that may not be sustainable. It's really a huge opportunity for someone else to step in and offer top financial and business content for free and pick up the readers that don't want to pay for either the FT or the WSJ.
"If they put their mind to it then they can produce compelling products online which people will pay for."
Tears are the vehicle that God gives us to transport someone from our lives into our hearts, where they live forever.
One of my dearest friends and supports, Ward Wieman, died on Saturday after a prolonged and valiant battle against cancer. I would say that he was a mentor, but the respect and caring that he had for me (and many like me) was such that he would have preferred to think of us as friends.
I am not alone in the deep sorrow I feel. I try not to cry in public, but I actually welcome the feeling of how much Ward meant to me and others. And my tears are not just about missing him, but about being grateful to him.
Ward's entire life was about being of service and making the effort to truly understand others and then help them in any way he could. He was one of the most selfless people I have ever known, and having him in my life always made me want to be a better man.
Nearly fifteen years ago, Ward saved my bacon when, after making an afternoon presentation to a consulting group, I felt like a total failure. My topic was "How to Get Paid What You're Worth as a Consultant," and I had made the foolish mistake of opening my talk with some gimmick to impress the group. It went over like a lead balloon, and my presentation proceeded to deteriorate from there.
Following my presentation, there was time for the consultants to have a cocktail, after which we would have dinner and then I would give a second presentation. While they were sipping cocktails and networking with each other, I was in the restroom, nauseated and thinking of ways to get out of my evening presentation.
If I ran away, I thought, I would have trouble making future presentations in the business world. (I was three years into venturing into that arena from a full-time clinical psychotherapy practice). I spoke with Ward about this and he brainstormed with me about scrapping my prepared evening talk and instead facilitating an entirely interactive discussion in which people would share stories of "not being paid what they were worth as a consultant" and others would share how they had solved a similar situation. Ward volunteered to go first, of course, humbly recounting a time when a client stiffed him. I have always thought that he made the story up for my benefit, to direct the subsequent conversation in the direction it needed to go.
And the result? Even after suffering through my afternoon presentation, surely one of the worst they had seen, the consulting group stayed later for my evening presentation than they had ever stayed. Several came up to me to thank me for the best presentation they had seen in the organization.
That was quintessential Ward.
Ward held a Masters of Science degree in industrial engineering from the University of Missouri. He taught undergraduate engineering subjects at Missouri University and earned distinction as a Registered Professional Engineer. More recently, Ward appeared on several TV shows and international radio. He was featured in three books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. He was a sought-after speaker on the subjects of rapid business growth, turnarounds, and negotiating.
In 1963 he started his career as an industrial engineer with Eastman Kodak and was able to enter the ranks of engineering management over the next three years.
In 1966 Ward joined Texas Instruments to create and manage their Program Management department. From 1966 to 1972, he advanced through line and staff management positions, culminating in a position in which he was responsible for corporate planning activities. This position reported to the president.
In 1972 he accepted responsibility for corporate financial functions, reporting to the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Rohr Industries. His responsibilities included acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures relating to joint ventures, subsidiaries and vendors. He achieved industry notoriety by quantitatively relating disruption of production operations to the resulting costs. This discovery led to multimillion dollar claims awards and commencement of Ward's consulting career.
Ward started his consulting career in 1975 with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co . After three years of managing up to 84 consultants, in 1978, he started his own consulting practice. Ward served as acting CEO, COO and GM for several clients. His clients include a broad spectrum of businesses from aerospace to food service. His accomplishments range from divestiture of a $125,000 dance studio to winning a $125,000,000 contract dispute award for a shipbuilder. Ward also functioned as a board member to several corporations.
More recently he had been the heart and soul and leader of a Trusted Advisor Network (which we refer to as the TAN group), and just three weeks before he died he brought me in as the main outside speaker at an Annual Sales Meeting of Navco, a company whose CEO he had recently become and that, with his help, quickly became even more successful than it had been.
In addition to recently serving as CEO of Navco, Ward was the founder and owner of Management Overload. He achieved international distinction as a management consultant due to his successes with rapid business growth and turnarounds. Prior to management consulting, Ward enjoyed 12 years of progressively responsible executive positions in three Fortune 100 companies, achieving high executive posts in two of these companies. He also served as an advisor to President Carter on zero-based budgeting and productivity measurement during Carter's presidency.
Even after the bathroom incident, Ward continued to support me through my career, as he did for many others. I hope Ward knew how grateful so many of us were to him. And for those of us who wonder if we sufficiently let him know how we felt about him, I am certain he is in Heaven replying with his gentle, caring smile, "Yes, I knew, now go on and have a great life."
A final note; Ward would not be pleased if he caused us to feel so sad about his passing. He would prefer to put a smile on our face as much in death as he did in life. To that end, I am reminded of the description of "A Good Death" that Dr. Henry A. Murray passed onto another dear friend and mentor of mine, Dr. Edwin Shneidman. As Murray defined it: "It's dying so as to be as little a pain in the a** to your family and friends as possible."
If that is the case, Ward had indeed "a good death," but more than that, he had a great life. And for those of us who were privileged to know him and be known by him, our lives were made great by his presence.
Who are you grateful to? Have you let them know? Shouldn't you?
United by a common professional passion, participants would huddle around conference tables and compare data, trade insights, and argue over which designs would work best with local water systems. And the community achieved results: Participants found ways to significantly cut the time and cost involved in system design by increasing the pool of experience that they could draw upon, tapping insights from different disciplines, and recycling design ideas from other projects.
Too much attention from management, went the thinking, would crush the group’s collaborative nature. But the very informality of this community eventually rendered it obsolete. What happened to it was typical: The members gained access to more sophisticated design tools and to vast amounts of data via the internet. Increased global connectivity drew more people into the community and into individual projects. Soon the engineers were spending more time at their desks, gathering and organizing data, sorting through multiple versions of designs, and managing remote contacts. The community started to feel less intimate, and its members, less obligated to their peers. Swamped, the engineers found it difficult to justify time for voluntary meetings. Today the community in effect has dissolved—along with the hopes that it would continue generating high-impact ideas.
Our research has shown that many other communities failed for similar reasons. Nevertheless, communities of practice aren’t dead. Many are thriving—you’ll find them developing global processes, resolving troubled implementation, and guiding operational efforts. But they differ from their forebears in some important respects. Today they’re an actively managed part of the organization, with specific goals, explicit accountability, and clear executive oversight. To get experts to dedicate time to them, companies have to make sure that communities contribute meaningfully to the organization and operate efficiently.
Now I know that Google hires only the world’s smartest individuals. Well, I know of one exception. There’s a fellow in sales at Google who does not read Google technical papers or patents, but everyone else is just so smart it makes my pinfeathers quiver with the excitement of it all.
The story in Silicon Republic has a peculiar title which is the main point of the article; specifically, “In Three Years Desktops Will Be Irrelevant – Google Sales Chief.” The “sales chief” is obviously a sales person, and his name is John Herlihy. The point, in my view, is that most folks will be doing Webby things via a mobile device, probably an Android-based gizmo.
For me, the key segment in the write up was:
The digital world is fundamentally different to the traditional business world. Things happen much faster, websites spring up from nowhere, a video could be a YouTube hit in hours. It’s not good enough to apply normal management disciplines – we think that scarcity breeds clarity. If, for example, we have enough resources invested in something, we halve it and eliminate overheads. The other thing we do is celebrate failure. Here’s an analogy – the Roman legions used to send out scouts in different directions. If a scout didn’t return, the army didn’t head in that direction. We seek feedback at every opportunity on something – we either kill it, adjust it or redeploy resources. When we build something we strive for ubiquity in usage and adoption. That helps us understand how customers react and then we build a revenue model.
Okay, let’s think about this. First, I understand the “failure” idea. Buzz is a pretty good example as is the legal decision in Italy, the European anti trust thing, the hassle with China, and legal dust up brewing over the Apple HTC patent squabble. So, I think the “failure” idea is solid.
Where does fact leave off and marketing begin? Source: http://elephanthunters.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/used-car-salesman-cropped.jpg
What’s not so solid is the notion of seeking feedback. The Google system monitors. When a person has a problem with Nexus One, Google had automated software in place but it wasn’t enough. There was no seeking. Users pushed themselves into Google’s semi automated spaces and Google scrambled to react. I still hear from potential customers that it is tough to get someone from Google to call them back, answer email, and keep appointments. When a gaffe occurs, Google turns to a “partner” in some cases. Maybe Mr. Herlihy is fixing up this confusion about seek and feedback, but I think the track record in the last 90 days is pretty easy to read.
Finally, the point about a revenue model is an interesting one. Let’s take an example. Google’s revenue comes from advertising. I think the dependence on advertising is significant. Now look at YouTube.com. Google has been inventing its way to rich media for more than eight years. What is in place? Lots of traffic, lots of costs, lots of copyright PR problems, lots of channels, and lots of competitors. Oh, I almost forget. Not so much revenue. Google is a patient creature, but I think that the activity in the rich media sector is an area where Google appears to be a leader in traffic but lags behind more interesting video services from companies able to move more quickly and deftly in the rich media arena.
But the silliest comment in the write up, if its presentation of the Googler’s words is spot on, concerns desktop computers. I think I know that the chief sales Googler is really talking about gizmos that run Android and connect to Googzilla’s platform. But the reality is that Googlers do love their boat anchors, their Mac hardware, and their big server farms where the whole 15,000 assemblage is little more than a big desktop computer.
When I look ahead 36 months, do I see a Googler troubleshooting a Sawzall code glitch on a mobile device? The answer is, “Maybe.” More realistically I see a covey of Googlers crowded around a couple of laptops emulating the modulations of a test pilot whose airplane is tumbling out of control. I also see the folks making videos for online services requiring desktop computers. Have you looked at an Adobe interface recently. The giant display panel is an absolute must. I also think the Google sales chief should wander through MI6 or the MoD and check out the hardware. Government agencies, particularly certain government agencies, will be hooking lads and lasses to their boat anchors for years to come.
Anyway, Mr. Herlihy is a Googler and his pronouncements are given wide circulation. Too bad most of what he says is sales double talk and wordsmithing. I know another Googler with whom he would like to meet and spend time exchanging comments about Google’s deepest technical capabilities. Heck, these two fellows may be cousins. Here in Kentucky we call this relationship “kissin’ cousins.” Just my anthropological opinion, gentle reader.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2010
No one paid me to point out that Google has its share of sales professionals who are skilled at making bold statements which, upon closer examination, are mostly marketing jam spread around by “real” journalists. I think I have to report anything to do with food and non payment to the Department of Agriculture. Done.
Welcome to a series of interviews I’m calling “The Nitty Gritty Heart.” It has to do with the intersection of heart and spirituality and the world of business.
The inspiration for this series came a few years ago at a lunch I was having with a fairly well-known business teacher. He was known for teaching nuts and bolts strategy to his clients and customers, but admitted to me that he used a spiritual approach in his own business, but didn’t know how or if he should teach it.
My experience has been that many of the successful people around us do both: they bring in heart AND the details. But how?
The intention is to help people integrate their sense of spirit and the business world, and to do it in a way that honors the details and numbers that businesses need to function, and honoring the non-linearity and non-logical wisdom that sometimes comes through the Divine. And vice-versa. 
It’s summed up in the three deceptively simple questions I’m asking:
Pam Slim is the award-winning author and blogger of Escape from Cubicle Nation. She’s worked in and with corporations, as well as with gang members, seeing surprising similarities in both.
She has a real grasp of what needs to happen in order to make business work, and her rallying cry is “Hating your job is not a business plan.”
Something else that is immediately evident when you meet her is Pam’s presence. She carries a clarity, strength, and vulnerability with her that is powerful. And it’s not surprising that she has real insights into spirituality and business.
The interview went about 30 minutes, and I think you’ll be fascinated the whole way through.
Option- or Right-click to download.
Make sure you follow her blog and read her book.
And let me know how you liked the interview-was it helpful? I think I’m going to do a bunch of them- I have several more already scheduled. How do you integrate your heart and your business?
After more than a decade of refining the Internet as a marketplace, the business world is grappling with the uneasy reality that companies can run almost every information system they rely on without owning any tech equipment. Thanks to the phenomenon known as cloud computing, businesses can rent access to applications and IT infrastructure that reside on the Internet, pay for them on a subscription or per-use basis and provide employees with access to information from anywhere at any time with nothing more than a connected device.
In theory, it sounds great. No more wrangling with software updates or growing storage requirements. And the days of having to expand data centers to make room for additional racks of servers to support a growing business? Gone.
Of course, the promise of cloud computing goes far beyond providing solutions to such headaches. It may, in fact, hold promise for transforming the role of IT within the business. The potential to one day subscribe to systems as a service could mean an end to wrangling with infrastructure decisions by letting a service provider sweat issues like server capacity, storage and bandwidth. Cloud computing also may prove to be an ideal strategy for reaping the full benefit of mobile devices by allowing companies to essentially push their IT Environment out to employees, rather than employees having to get access to the IT environment.
But theory isn’t reality, and just because cloud computing holds promise doesn’t mean that’s going to translate into practical solutions for real business technology challenges—at least, not anytime soon. Cloud computing serves as a reminder that computing models constantly change. As businesses face increasing pressures to be as agile as possible, they’ll be forced to adapt to evolving computing models to remain competitive.
The full article can be found at http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/The-Forecast-for-Cloud-Computing/
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As a kid, when your mom told you to put on a scarf before heading out into the cold, it was probably easy for you to dismiss her advice. Hearing the same advice from a bundled-up friend, however, probably swayed your decision. The power of peer influence similarly controls the business world.
In fact, the elasticity of word-of-mouth referrals is about 20 times higher than that for marketing events, a 2009 research report on the Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing showed. Word-of-mouth marketing is more sustainable than media appearances and, as the study pointed out, "may be among the most effective of marketing communication strategies." No wonder that in 2008, spending on word-of-mouth marketing increased 14.2% to $1.54 billion!
To increase word-of-mouth marketing as a company, you need to amplify the happy voices of your customers and make them your best evangelists. By sharing their success stories of using your product or service, you empower them to sway the purchase decisions of many others. Creating customer case studies lends itself to our human instinct to share, tell a story and give advice.
So, what are the immediate benefits of writing or video recording a case study?
Case studies help potential customers identify with handpicked success stories that reflect their business needs and problems, making it easy for sales to communicate value. Your consultants can emphasize specific aspects of the product by pointing to different examples. In our case, for instance, one customer loves our software’s lead nurturing, while another is most excited about the CMS.
When creating case studies, think about the multiple platforms to which you can upload your content. You can use YouTube and Blip.tv for videos, SlideShare.com for presentations and PDF files, and Twitter and Facebook for promotion. Thus, you make it easier for potential customers to stumble upon your product.
Reengaging with your current customer base to select a fascinating case study can bring you lots of insight. Along the way, you will learn who your most passionate advocates are, and you can use that knowledge to better design your marketing initiatives and target the ideal marketing persona. At the end of the day, this is a learning process that offers inspiration, valuable feedback and fresh ideas.
Telling your customers’ success stories in their own words puts a human face to your product. It shows both the challenges and excitements involved in the purchase and usage process, thus creating a more personal experience. The online community gravitates to these types of stories and is willing to share them with friends.
To be effective, case studies don't have to be a huge corporate undertaking. The message is what brings out the true value and the voice of your most passionate customers. Think of case studies as opportunities for a genuine dialogue with your customers.
Creating case studies allows you to harness peer-to-peer influence, generating influential brand evangelists out of your most successful customers and facilitating word-of-mouth marketing. For more study ideas, browse through some of HubSpot's own case studies, and then start creating your own today!
Photo credit: Mrs Logic
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By Jerry Del Colliano
With plenty of laptops in the business world ranging in age from five to eight years old, Hewlett-Packard is rubbing its hands together. It anticipates a big upgrade cycle in 2010 among commercial PC users whose companies might just be ready to give them a reasonable machine on which to do work, despite the weak economy.…
The Fortune 500’s use of blogs, online video, and podcasts continues to increase, but microblogging site Twitter was the social media channel of choice in 2009.
According to a new study, The Fortune 500 and Social Media:
The study also found growing adoption of podcasting and online video among the Fortune 500:
“The continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies demonstrate the growing importance of social media in the business world,” stated researcher Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D.
Are you one of those iPhone owners that just uses the swipe and unlock feature on your handset? Your phone isn’t really “locked” by definition — unless you have a passcode enabled, anyone with a pulse and a finger could get at your phone data. A nose will actually work too, even though it’s difficult — as an iPhone carrying runner who wears gloves in winter, I sadly have experience in this matter. Now you could add a 4-digit passcode to help offset data theft if your phone walks away. Simply hit Settings, General, and Passcode Lock on your iPhone to set it up. That’s a start down the safety path, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could use a stronger, alphanumeric password? It turns out that you can.
UNEASYsilence points out the method that enterprise iPhone users have long since known — use the downloadable iPhone Configuration Utility, freely available for Windows or Mac on Apple’s website. The software is geared towards iPhone deployments in the business world, so there’s far more functionality than simply adding a secure passcode. But until Apple adds this functionality to the native iPhone OS platform — and I think they should — this is one way to make your handset more secure.
Once you’ve downloaded the utility, just connect your iPhone with a USB cable and then run the iPhone Configuration Utility. You’ll need to create a configuration profile by name and identifier like I did here.
Next, simply click on the Passcode setting in the utility to bring up the passcode configuration screen. You see that I went hog-wild in this example with multiple attributes, but all you need to click is the “Require alphanumeric value” box for a minimal boost in data security. Adding in other attributes like I have will beef things up even more.
After you modify the Passcode settings, you just need to install the configuration profile to your already connected iPhone. Find your phone’s name on the left side of the utility, click it and tap the Install button.
The profile is sent to your iPhone over USB and to complete the installation, you just follow the prompts on your device. Once installed, you can disconnect your iPhone and you’re good to go with better protection of your handset data. And if you ever want to revert back to the basic passcode — or none at all — simply connect your iPhone, run the utility and choose to Remove the configuration profile from your device. After the profile is removed, just hit Settings, General and Passcode Lock, then enter that old passcode one last time and you can disable the lock for good.
Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Apple Thinks Enterprise is Ready For the iPhone
Steve Jobs' second-in-command on AT&T, the TV business and Apple's "hubris"
Cook and Jobs
Tim Cook, Apple's (AAPL) chief operating officer and the company's envoy to the business world, made his third appearance at a Goldman Sachs' (GS) technology conference Tuesday. Among the highlights of his wide-ranging Q&A:
You can get the audio webcast from Goldman Sachs here.
See also:
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
Adina Levin relates a conversation we had a few weeks ago in San Francisco. She seems to have grasped my ideas on publicy and smoothed them out in a great way:
- Adina Levin, How boundaries are formed in a more transparent world
Last night at the Social Business Tweetup in San Francisco, I had a conversation with Stowe Boyd about new ways boundaries will be constructed in a world of increased transparency. In the personal world and the business world, more is transparent, boundaries are more porous; boundaries continue to exist, and are created in some different ways.
Signal to noise. When constant streams of talk and data are available, the biggest need is for tools and affordances to manage attention and improve signal to noise. This is a difficult design problem – Facebook, for example, has moved away from hard-to-use individual controls, in favor of not-very-useful algorithmic filters.
Social context I talked at the party to someone working on a startup that is providing tools, analogous to Twibes but with different use cases, to make visible ad hoc groups on Twitter. Even in a public stream, people need ways of paying focused attention to sets of other people.
Shared identity creation. Stowe talked about a changing understanding about disclosure – a privacy-focused model imagines the individual as a source of identity information that is shared. An alternative model imagines aspects of identity as being created within the contexts of subcultures. This view of identity formation isn’t new. But thinking about identity in this way in a digital context leads, for example, to different ways of thinking about decentralized profile information. Maybe you don’t make a central profile and share aspects of it, but create aspects of a profile in a subculture context and choose what to aggregate.
Social thickness Even when conversations are publicly visible, not all conversations are socially accessible. There are purely social norms and processes of group formation, with different levels of social ties operating in social context where everyone can nominally see what’s happening. These are enacted at the level of talk and patterns of reply. Social network analysis can see some of this, the sensitive question is to what end, since the social processes are subtle, and algorithmic approaches are unsubtle (think Facebooks’ reminders to get in touch with people who are famous or people you don’t talk to for good reasons.)
Power at the interface Organizations continue to have boundaries. Naive uses of social media put powerless “watchers” at the boundaries – the representative of Citibank who tells me soothing words when Citi blocks my card yet again, because I shop in batches, but has no power to affect their algorithm or their design for transaction verification. Better would be internal collaboration at the boundary, allowing the organization to react with power to signals it watches for.
Stowe has been talking about his take on these trends using the term publicy. The consequences of these trends for business will be discussed at the upcoming Social Business Edge conference on April 19 in New York.
Looks like the outline of a great talk for the conference, Adina.
A Sky News Android app has landed on the Android Market, bringing breaking headlines and video straight to your Google phone. Care to hurry things up over at the BBC, Erik?
We’ll still be waiting a few months for that promised BBC News Android app, but in the meantime, a Sky News Android app is ready to download on the Android Market right now, for free. Fire up the Sky News Android app and you can see the latest stories in seven different categories (Top stories, UK, sport, politics, business, world and showbiz).
Sky Mobile Nokia app hits the Ovi Store
The Sky News Android app is out now to download on the Android Market now.
Out Now | £free | Sky
Related posts:
There are times when you bump into YouTube videos that surely give you shivers of excitement from some of the superb ideas that permeate throughout the video clip altogether. There are times when you bump into one of those short videos you just can’t stop playing them back and forth, trying to absorb every single nugget that comes out of them! There are times when you watch one of those and, after going through it, you never expect you would be so energised about the stuff that really matters to you, even if it comes from the most unexpected places. Well, What We Do And Why is one of those video clips.
It features a quick introduction by Anne Marie McEwan (Who I started following in Twitter a little while ago and from whom I have learned quite a bit so far), and in it she spends a little bit less than 5 minutes describing what her company, The Smart Work Company (Gotta love that name, too!), is all about and what their main mission is: help people, and their businesses!, become smarter at what they already doing through better ways of learning and managing.
If you care about Web work, about the next generation of knowledge workers, about the impact that social technologies are having in the current business world, about how meaningful the concept of networks is in helping shape the next wave of our leaders, this would be one video you would want to watch! Yes, indeed, it’s that inspiring and surely a treat to watch!
And you know the best part of it all for me? The narrative! It’s so beautifully told and with such a nice pace that it surely makes you stick around till the very end and when you are done you keep wondering where you could get more! Well, I guess that would be The Smart Work Company. I am sure that Anne Marie and her team would be incredibly successful with such important mission and if you ever wonder how it is all about working smarter, but not necessarily harder this video clip and its various messages clearly show, and lead!, the way!
Hope you enjoy it, just as much as I did …
Very very nice piece of work, don’t you think? 
Tags: Anne Marie McEwan, The Smart Work Company, TheSmartWorkCompany, Smart Work, Working Smart, Learning, Managing, Management, Leaders, Innovation, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Productivity, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Work, Narrative, Stories, Storytelling
Brilliant Google Product Policy and Why Buzz Is Wise http://bit.ly/9xG1QQ
Given how huge Google is and the giant’s reputation in the online business world, it is no wonder that everything that Google chooses to launch as a new product never stays unnoticed and gets tons of coverage in the blogosphere and in traditional media.
The latest addition of Google Buzz is no exception, of course, as the blogosphere could not ignore Google trying to popularize the idea of lifestreaming to millions upon millions of users of Gmail, its wildly popular web-based email service. In fact, I think it will be no exaggeration to guess that for quite a number of web users around the world Gmail is the home page in their browsers, the first thing they see when they head online every day. And who will resist clicking that multi-color icon to check what the Buzz is?
Of course the launch of Google Buzz was accompanied by quite a number of criticizing voices about Google jeopardizing users’ privacy (as if it does not all the time by monitoring what we search for and what our email content is) and copying some of the worst FriendFeed features and for numerous other things that left geeks in the tech blogosphere unhappy.
But happy or not, I think we all should admit that Google will now do to lifestreaming what FriendFeed could never achieve - no matter how much we liked the cozy place to chat to our friends and promote each others’ posts over there. It is evident that the number of Gmail users is disproportionately higher than the number of people who ever heard of FriendFeed at all.
And now Google comes and introduces a FriendFeed of its own - a very simple new service that does not seem to need explanation as much as FriendFeed needed when it was first launched, at least because the geeks can help explaining and because the number of connected sites is so limited that you can’t really get lost even if you try to.
Now that I think about it, I can’t help but admire Google’s product policy: they saw something that seemed to be interesting to a number of people, they saw some potential in the idea and they used one of their flagship products, Gmail, to make it truly popular - and make some more millions off Adsense ads wisely integrated into Gmail interface years ago.
Ok, they don’t really want to invent and innovate these days. Instead, they simply follow the market trends and launch their own products to meet demands of their existing user base for these products instead of creating awareness and building new markets. After all, they probably innovated enough after they came up with the best search engine that ever existed, introduced the cleanest possible interface for email and made contextual advertising a hit. Now they definitely can afford following the market trends and launching their own iterations of promising things someone else invites.
Google Buzz is only one example and probably not the most prominent one because only a tiny portion of web users ever knew about FriendFeed - and an even smaller portion actually used the service. But come to think of it, Google’s product policy has not really been about dramatic innovations recently.
When they launched Gmail, internet users knew what email was and many had Yahoo Mail accounts - and the only thing that Google did was packing it all in a much cleaner interface and adding some small unusual features on the road. The growing popularity of their web-based office suite - Google Docs - is not really a wonder either: after all, everyone knows what text processors and spreadsheets are and it’s not really too much of a challenge to explain that it all can be used online via a browser and for free as an additional benefit as opposed to expensive Microsoft products. And was not it logical to launch a web browser of their own? After all, everyone knew what a browser was by the time and many people found the clean interface and speed of Chrome to be very appealing.
Android was their next huge release and again there was nothing revolutionary in it: everyone knows what cell phones and smart phones are and a number of companies develop operating systems for these devices - so Google simply came up with something that would be attractive to their target users, not really inventing but instead improving on others’ products.
Finally, they decided to launch a phone of their own - Nexus One - and again the same pattern: there’s no real need to explain to people what a touch-screen phone is, right? And it only took me 2 minutes to explain to my husband’s younger sister that his new phone actually was a Google phone even though she only heard about Google as a search engine until the moment she borrowed that shiny and new Nexus One to make a call.
The only exception from this policy that I can remember right now is Google Wave that is promised to revolutionize the way we use email - and pretty soon. Right at the moment of Google presenting Wave to bloggers I thought this idea was too complicated to be useful and later on I have never figured out exactly how Wave could improve my life. Google Wave is the service that I’ve received the most questions about from my less techy friends asking what they were supposed to use it for. And the worst part is that I myself could never find any worthy explanation for them. In fact, I have never even given all the invites I have out because I don’t have enough friends who I could explain why they might need it to at all.
But exceptions only confirm the general rules and for Google it looks like a general rule has become this one: follow the market trends, listen to demands, improve on existing ideas and make them work because of the huge user base Google has. After all, everyone needs a text processor, a web-based email, a browser and a phone. And why should not it all be powered by Google?
Brilliant Google Product Policy and Why Buzz Is Wise
- Rob Diana
