Many star singers and musicians have started to use social media to reach their fans (and potential fans).
Twitter and Facebook fan pages have become particularly popular ways to engage with exclusive updates, blog musings and photos.
Now artists are taking it to a whole new level by debuting music videos, live streaming of concerts and fan contests.
Although emerging artists have been able to use this asymetric marketing to big effect, mainstream artists are increasingly embracing it. Shakira recently released her newest music video on Ustream , embedded on her Facebook page as well.
Likewise, Foo Fighter held a live concert using LiveStream on Facebook, and Jason Mraz chatted live diretly with his fans. All of those activities help them engage better with their fans through the virtual platform, rather than radio spots with its pay-to-play system and hard to penetrate broadcast TV shows.
Shakira and Foo Fighters are not the first ones to do this, but the fact that big labels see social media marketing as athe main stage, instead of a sideshow.
You may soon be able to sip Twitter brand wine. This shows not only the power of people interacting through Social Networking Sites, but also its potential business development model. All these new projects involving people generating content can be very creative and fun. As we have already mentioned, companies are trying to use these sites to create buzz for their products and company images. They are currently working hard to make people talk about themselves. And some are really enjoying this effective tool. That, however, is not the entire story.
Making Buzz on your Brands
Some product managers and executives hear too many things at once and have a hard time keeping track of trends. People express different opinions and thoughts which are often contradictory. So what are they really saying in the end? What percentage of people say your product is “cool” while the rest of them say it’s terrible? A product manager can be easily misled by focusing on only a small portion of customer feedback. What conclusion can be drawn from aggregated tweets and conversations?
The monitoring of user-generated content has been focused on classifying keywords presence. According to Overtone, Inc., many companies are still hiring people to literally read and manually categorize content. This method creates confusion because nobody can go over everything and accurately classify the words within a certain amount of time.
Different colors, different tastes, like different opinions
Overtone does not only focus on social networking sites, but analyzes emails, phone calls, and other various customer communications. They are not hiring people to do them manually; instead they have automated listening text analytic algorithms. But there are companies like Radian6 which are focusing on SNS sites. The commonality between them is “listening”. When I studied conflict resolution in graduate school, we learned that “listening” is the basic tool to resolve conflicts. My advice to companies: listen after you sing!
In B2B situations, sometimes and often many times, it is hard to reach the right person who makes decisions for business deals. Those people who have decision powers tend to be those who are inaccessible besides business hours. They are unlikely to attend networking social events or contact people on social networking sites. They are hard to reach and be found. Why?
Well, they are simply busy after work. They have kids to take care of. They have elderly parents who need to be driven to doctors. They have errands to do for their families. They do not have time for themselves until 9 or 10 pm at night. By that time, they are too tired and have to be in bed so that they can restart the same busy day the next day.
Then how and where can you convey your messages that your products are good or worthwhile to take a look at? I recently went to a seminar in Santa Clara which was hosted by KeyPoint Credit Union. It lasted from 11:30am till 1:30 pm with lunch included. It seemed to me that there were about 50 professionals gathered to listen to Linda Popky, the president of L2M Associates, Inc. I not only got hints and new ideas from the session, but also I met several professionals in different fields in such a short period of time.
a Presentation by Linda Popky of L2M Associates on "Thought Leadership"
According to Mr. Noyman , the Director of Sales & Development of Keypoint, they have been hosting the lunch time events. And their evening sessions easily attract 50-100 people per night. But the power of lunch time sessions should not be neglected. My professional friends, who are also busy with family responsibilities after work, say they go to breakfast/lunch time sessions or listen to podcasts and webinars, but not many evening sessions and they are hardly use any networking sites or twitter, delicious, etc.
If you are looking for a way to reach inaccessible busy people, organizaing attractive events during breakfast or lunch time is a good option. People will come if food is free, presenters are interesting, and locations are convenient to their offices. It does not have to be a face-to-face meeting as well. They could be webinars or online meetings. But don’t forget: Be creative and explore ways to attract other professionals in your field.
Many star singers and musicians have started to use social media to reach their fans (and potential fans).
In B2B situations, sometimes and often many times, it is hard to reach the right person who makes decisions for business deals. Those people who have decision powers tend to be those who are inaccessible besides business hours. They are unlikely to attend networking social events or contact people on social networking sites. They are hard to reach and be found. Why?
