Turntable Interface - Click to Enlarge

A few months ago, I wrote about two services that let you share music legally. Since that time, the social music scene has continued to grow with the launch of numerous new services. In particular, the release of Spotify in the States and the launch of Turntable.fm have generated significant online buzz. Each are still in beta-invite phase, but if one of your Facebook friends is on Turntable (chances of this are good) you can use the service now.

For those unfamiliar with these services, Spotify is a more social version of the personal music library with a pricing structure revolving around music licensing rather than ownership. On the other hand, Turntable is an entirely new service that takes the concept of social music to a whole new level; here’s how:

Service Structure
After logging into Turntable users see a list of numerous rooms they can join to listen to music; rooms with your friends in them are displayed at the top of the list. Songs are played in turn by five DJs, and anyone can step up and play music from their own library if there are less than five people DJing. Users that aren’t DJing hang out in the room and listen to music together. This structure creates a more social music experience than users will find elsewhere.

Social Features
Perhaps the most social aspect of Turntable is rating songs selected by DJs. At any point in the song, you can rate it as “awesome” or “lame.” Ratings from everyone in the room are aggregated to a “room vote,” when this rating falls too low the song is skipped. Crowdsourcing the approval of song selection to listeners motivates DJs to play songs they think listeners will enjoy, not just tracks they want to hear. If you’re especially impressed with a person’s music selection you can connect with them by becoming their fan. Adding to this social experience is an embedded group chat for people to suggest music, request to DJ, or talk about anything else they like.

Platform Integration
When you hear a song you enjoy, float your mouse over its title and six buttons will appear that allow you to add or find the song in multiple music services. The first button is naturally for Turntable, but is accompanied by external links to Amazon MP3, iTunes, Last.fm, Spotify, and Rdio. By integrating these other music services (some more social than others) into their interface, Turntable ensures that you can easily legally acquire new music you discover while listening with friends, fans, and DJs.

These various features make Turntable a very unique music platform that creates an entirely new way to listen to music. Rather than just discovering new music from your friends, Turntable lets you listen to new music with your friends, which will make your music experience more social and more fun!

If you’ve tried Turntable.fm we’d love to hear your thoughts on it! If you’re using another social music service, what do you like most about it?

Social media is increasingly becoming an influential force in business and on the Internet. It has had an irrevocable impact on marketing and has led to positive changes in corporate culture, including increased levels of brand transparency and accountability and, as a result, a heightened sense of corporate social responsibility. This corporate social responsibility has opened the door for a number of brands trying to change the world for the better while still turning a profit.

The social web makes it easier for these companies to spread their social messages, to generate issue awareness and to build their brands, and blogging has become a critical component to driving and delivering that social message. Blog content helps strengthen connections with people that may have originated on Facebook, Twitter or even at a retail store. A blog creates an informal “voice” that the organization can use to build trust and engage people who care for and support specific social causes. Two brands that I’ve seen doing this particularly well, are Impact Foods and Seventh Generation.

Impact Foods – This granola company has an ambitious mission, ending hunger. For each bag of granola they sell, they promise to feed a hungry child for one day. Impact’s blog strategy is narrating their mission, describing the company’s journey as they travel and deliver on their promise to help feed children. This builds trust with consumers because it shows Impact’s credibility, and demonstrates their commitment to the issue at hand.

Seventh Generation – One of the leading brands in green household and personal care products, Seventh Generation strives to make their products from plants and not petroleum, while operating as one of the most environmentally friendly companies. Over the past few years, their blog has become a resource for consumers covering everything from green household tips to advice on cleaning showers. This blogging strategy helps extend Seventh Generation’s mission to consumers, providing people with the information they need to make a difference whether or not they’ve purchased Seventh Generation products. By pushing information that advances their cause and not their product, Seventh Generation shows that the issue is just as important as the brand.

These are two unique blogging strategies, but they are both successful because they build trust and credibility with consumers. Brands that strive to change the world and impact a global issue have to first show they are trustworthy and transparent. A company blog is the perfect platform to accomplish this, while simultaneously building brand awareness and developing a following.

Have you seen other socially responsible corporate blogs that are changing the world? How does their blog strategy help advance their cause, their brand, or both?

Photo Credit: LittleMan

Everybody loves a good viral video. Whether you are watching funny cats or the Old Spice Guy duke it out with Fabio, viral videos are sure to entertain. Companies consistently try to achieve viral status with their marketing efforts, as a single viral video can provide millions of brand impressions and a level of buzz unattainable through paid media. However, creating viral videos isn’t a marketing strategy, rather it should only be a goal. This is because the power to make a video or campaign go viral lies in the tweets and shares of millions of social users and not in the hands of marketers.

One danger to considering viral marketing a strategy and not a goal is focusing more on the video than the actual campaign. By this I mean allocating more time and budget to video production, special effects, and promotion channels than to the execution of the campaign strategy. To ensure the best chance of going viral, try allocating resources in the opposite manner. From what I’ve seen, simple videos documenting complex and creative campaigns go viral more often than complex videos documenting simple campaigns. Here are two such videos, which both went viral because of the creativity of each campaign, and not each video:

Tropicana Natural Energy: In France, Tropicana created a billboard covered in oranges with the words “Energie Naturelle” (natural energy) glowing on the front in neon. The catch was that the oranges provided 100% of the energy needed to light the sign, and this received a very positive reaction from the crowd.

Heineken Soccer (Football) Heist: After creating a fake classical music and poetry concert on the day of the biggest soccer match of the year in Italy, Heineken then recruited girlfriends, professors, and bosses to ask boyfriends, students, and coworkers to attend the phony concert. On game day the concert room was packed, and at game time the heist was revealed and everyone was thrilled.

Why did these campaigns go viral?
As you can see, marketing campaigns with the best chance of going viral use emotion to spark interest. Curiosity, joy, surprise, and awe are just a few of the feelings that Heineken and Tropicana successfully created with these efforts. The second reason they were so successful is that viewers appreciated the brands’ efforts to give something to them. In the Tropicana example, this was as simple as something neat and innovative for a Paris passerby to look at, while in Heineken’s case they gave people the chance to watch one of the biggest soccer matches of the year. Online viewers will likely remember these videos the next time they see a Heineken or Tropicana product. These memorable positive brand impressions are another reason that viral marketing can be so valuable and effective.

What other marketing campaigns have you seen go viral? In your experience, do these viral instances occur more often because of the creativity of the campaign or the video? Let us know what you think!

Videos via Adverblog and Guerrilla Communications

In this day and age, staying organized can be very difficult. To maintain productivity and organization, many have turned to Evernote, a multi-platform application that allows users to create and categorize notes in Evernote notebooks. The application’s expanding user base has led to an increasing number of application add-ons and new social capabilities. Here are three features that will help you get the most out of Evernote.

Twitter and Email Integration – By following @myEN, you can setup Evernote to capture all of your tweets with “@myEN” in the body as well as direct messages to the @myEN account. This integration helps users deal with the here one second, gone the next nature of social media. If you see a tweet/link in your stream that you’d like to save, simply copy the text, send a quick DM, and view it later in Evernote. The email integration works similarly. The application assigns each user an Evernote specific email address, and all mail sent to it is converted to notes. Now when you get an important email, forward it to your Evernote address, and you are more likely to remember to respond.

Sharing Notes – Another way to take advantage of social media with Evernote is sharing notes to Facebook. This can be particularly effective within groups because you can target a specific friend segment that the note or task is relevant to (i.e. “Cycling Club”). The greatest value in sharing notes however, is that sharing also creates a public copy of a note with a specific URL. For convenience, you do not have to post on Facebook to share notes publicly, and you can always stop publicly sharing a note from the Evernote interface at any time.

Public Notebooks – Several companies now offer Evernote notebooks that you can download and add on to with your own notes. The content of these notebooks is usually both a resource and a source of inspiration. Examples include recipe books, photography guides, and art collections. Adding your own recipe to a notebook and then sharing it is just one way brand and consumer co-creation can be facilitated by public notebooks.

These three features may help you stay organized, but hopefully they also add some fun to your social experience! Whether discovering new pieces of art from a public notebook, creating grocery lists, or sharing your grandmother’s famous blueberry pie recipe with relatives on Facebook, Evernote has something for almost everyone.

Do you have any experience with Evernote? Let us know how you use it? What are your favorite features, we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Many people have already acknowledged that the 2012 elections will be the first time social media plays a large role in presidential campaigns. While Barack Obama was able to harness its power in the 2008 election, use and adoption of social media was not what it is today. Since 2008 the number of tweets sent per day has increased from 300 thousand to 200 million, and the number of Facebook users has jumped from 100 million to 750 million.

This growth has led to a similar rise in social media’s public influence, and has made a social presence necessary for political campaign success. This marriage has proved particularly effective because social users are more inclined to share and engage when they are passionate about something. Politics are an area where strong beliefs and opinions create passion, which sparks social activity. Facebook and Twitter profiles are used to capture this activity, but social media is now also being used in more innovative ways in politics. Here are two recent examples:

Politicians on Plus – As of now, Newt Gingrich is one of only two presidential candidates to have a profile on Google+ (the other being Gary Johnson). While both politicians generally post the same content to their Facebook pages and Google+ profiles, Gingrich is also taking advantage of the hangout feature. He has hosted two hangouts so far, and even posted the video to the first here. These group video chats could help candidates create more personal connections with supporters, and should increase candidate transparency as well. More candidates will probably try this approach in the future, and Johnson has already indicated that he will host a Google+ hangout soon.

First Presidential Debate on Twitter – Following the massive participation in Barack Obama’s town hall, conservatives hosted a presidential debate for Republican candidates with the Twitter handle @140townhall. The debate followed a traditional format with opening statements and time limits for questions dictated by moderators. Twitter has proved to be a great platform to host town hall style events because of the digestibility of 140 character messages, and its ability to reach and participate with an audience. Like Google+ hangouts, we will likely see more of these Twitter events in the future.

What do you think of the way social media has influenced the 2012 elections so far? Have you seen other innovative uses of social media in politics? Comment here and let us know, we’d love to hear about them!

Photo Credit: Twitter

If there’s one thing everyone could use more of, it’s good ideas. Good ideas are the lifeblood of innovation; they have the power to improve your business, and more importantly to make the world a better place. Last week a friend sent me this video from author Steven Johnson, about where good ideas come from. While watching, social media immediately came to mind, and I think you’ll see why. Take four minutes out of your Friday to watch this fun video, you won’t be disappointed!

What do you think?

One quote that resonated with me was “chance favors the connected mind.” The social web enables minds to connect more frequently than ever before, increasing the chance that you will find someone who can help you formulate and conceptualize your good idea. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and networking at events are all simply different ways to increase connectivity. According to Steven Johnson, that is precisely what will lead to innovation. If this principle holds true, one apparent conclusion is that social media has the power to make the world a better place, and that’s certainly a fun (and good) idea!

However social media doesn’t only encourage innovation by connecting people. Another one of its great accomplishments is increasing the quantity and speed of information sharing. People can now share whatever they want, whenever they want. As a whole, social media has created a platform to share opinions, thoughts, and any variety of content. This increases the amount and diversity of information that our minds process daily, improving the chance that we will find the “missing piece” needed to complete our ideas. As Steven Johnson mentions, the faster these pieces come together the faster innovation will occur.

So at the end of the day, it seems social media is more than just fun; by increasing good ideas it can even help make the world a better place!

How have you seen social media lead to innovation? Has social media helped you develop your own good ideas?

Within the social media industry, the best way to measure the value of influence is a hot topic of discussion. Last July, Empire Avenue, an interesting new service that lets you “play” with social presence (and influence), was launched. It’s a social hub that is designed to evaluate and raise your social media presence while creating a fun way to drive social activity and connections. Lately, the popularity of this service has substantially increased.

Empire Avenue measures social presence in an imaginary currency (eaves), and allows you to increase your value through a stock market-like interface where you buy and sell Empire Avenue profiles, or stocks. You can link Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook Fan Pages to your Empire Avenue account; this in turn drives your personal social “valuation.”

The true fun of this service lies in the ability to buy and sell stocks of your favorite companies and social media thought leaders. If the value of your portfolio increases, your net wealth in eaves will rise. The value of your stock increases when other users buy shares of your stock, and accordingly decreases if too many users sell your stock. However, there are plenty of other ways to earn more eaves to invest with. These include watching video advertisements, trying free or paid offers, buying magazine subscriptions, and even purchasing eaves with real US dollars (for the serious enthusiasts!).

What’s the point of having all these eaves?

Eaves allow you to add luxury items to your profile, such as mansions, yachts, or airplanes. For newer users with less net wealth, “luxury” items such as bicycles and canoes are also available at much cheaper prices. Eaves are also used to upgrade your profile capabilities, allowing you to buy and sell larger quantities of stock. Essentially, the more eaves you have, the more fun Empire Avenue will be! Apart from fun, eaves also increase the valuation of your social media profile on Empire Avenue.

Ultimately, this service is another way for social web users to connect and interact across multiple online networks in one place. However, the stock market interface, and the amount of control you have over the wealth created by your social activities, makes this a fun and rewarding activity.

Check it out for yourself! How many eaves is your social presence worth? As of now, I’m worth 10.22e per share!

When most people hear the words “music sharing,” copyright violations and lawsuits are the first things that come to mind. But today’s music sharing is not about sharing files and downloads; it’s about sharing what you are listening to and discovering new music through your social connections. Two of the most prominent social music services today are iLike and Grooveshark. Both services enable you to socially share your music preferences through your social networks.

Grooveshark – This service allows users to add songs from Grooveshark’s massive database to a personal library, akin to an online iTunes interface. Personal libraries are accessible through almost any Internet browser and allow you to play your library of songs from their platform. However, you can’t download songs or transfer them to an iPod/mp3 player. One of the most appealing aspects of Grooveshark is the ability to follow your friends and discover new music from their listening habits. Clicking on a “Community” tab provides a news feed depicting what music your friends are listening to and what new music they’ve added to their libraries. Users can also view a friend’s library and any saved playlists they may have. Like most online services, Grooveshark will become more valuable as the number of your friends using the service increases.

iLike – The aim of this service is not in creating an online version of iTunes, but in aggregating music content that iLike determines is relevant to your tastes. It provides an accessory sidebar to iTunes or Windows Media Player that helps you discover new, free music from your favorite artists. If you download the sidebar, iLike will extract information about your most played music and upload it to your iLike profile. Socially, iLike friends can be added via email, Facebook, or MySpace. Another key functionality of this service is alerting you to concerts in your region by your favorite artists. This information can be found on your profile on the iLike website or through the Facebook version of your profile, where the iLike service is seamlessly integrated and simply referred to as the “Music” application.

Both of these social music services are designed to help you discover new music, but the differences lie in how they strive to accomplish that. iLike will alert you when new music from your favorite artists becomes available, while Grooveshark relies on your social community of friends to discover new music. Most importantly, both services allow you to share and celebrate your favorite music with your friends, legally!

Have you used either of these services? Tell us about your experiences with each! Which service do you ultimately like best? Why?

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

During our previous two Creativity Coffees, we continued the discussion about online communities by drilling down into the Voice of the Brand. We talked about whether or not it matters if an individual’s personality shines through a brand in Voice of the Brand—Who is Talking as well as about What is Your Brand’s Voice, that is, how businesses should determine the “social voice” of their brand on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

In this week’s discussion, we focused on an issue that has been bouncing from blog to blog–Who Owns Social Marketing in a Company? In fact, I recently read a blog post that emphatically claimed that PR should wholly own social media in a company since it’s a PR function to speak to the public. Given that there are many ways that social media is being used in businesses, is this a viable stance? Who owns the strategy behind the tactical use of social media? How should companies go about creating different social accounts for different purposes? These are real problems that businesses are facing as they become more engaged in social marketing, and we thought it would be a great topic for thought and discussion. Here are the ideas that came out of our Creativity Coffee.

1. Adoption of social media/social marketing is usually driven by a specific initiative within a company; that drives “ownership.”
• While social marketing is starting to be “baked in” to the marketing strategies of large brands and companies, we’re mostly hearing about brand “initiatives” that utilize social media channels. The genesis of the use of social marketing within a company is usually through a single initiative that generally drives the initial “owner” of social marketing within a company.
• However, marketers within a company are recognizing the potential value of social marketing and are already baking resources into their budgets. HOW this budget is used, and the strategies behind these resources vary wildly from company to company.
2. There are not many stories of company-wide implementations of social marketing—YET.
• However, companies like Best Buy have integrated social marketing into their corporate strategy and culture and many groups and individuals have “ownership” and responsibility for social marketing.
• BestBuy’s @twelpforce is actually a collective account with individuals registering and then tweeting with the hashtag #twelpforce. They have clear guidelines for tweeting for twelpforce and are driving personal interest in social media into the corporate strategy for customer service and differentiation.
• BestBuy has driven social media to be a part of their corporate culture. But HOW do you go about incorporating social into a corporate culture? Does the prevalence of use of social media by your employees drive you to integrate that into your culture, or do you try to spur the early adopters in your company to lead the charge (and drive others to get involved)? How do you separate the personal from the brand’s voice? BestBuy used a technical solution (retweeting anything with a specific hashtag sent by one of their registered employees), but how do you manage the policies and procedures. Lots of food for thought.
3. It’s hard to pinpoint who owns social marketing in a company—or who SHOULD own it.
• Initiatives drive initial owners
• Initiatives within different departments can drive further implementation and Use Cases
• There is no RIGHT answer for all businesses; “It depends” reigns again; each business has different goals and needs
4. There are clear “points of origin” and use cases—and multiple owners.
• Marketing: Lead generation, brand awareness, brand analysis, performance marketing, commerce, community development, customer loyalty, customer engagement, customer referral
• Public Relations: PR and News, Press relations
• Product Management / Marketing: Community development, product development and innovation
• Customer Service/Support: Customer service, customer feedback
• Sales: Lead generation, revenue generation, sales promotion
5. Favorite quote of the day: “Search marketing and social marketing are like lobsters and pandas. They are both animals, but they are VERY different.”
• Search = Transactional
• Social = Referrals

All this talk about different points of origin and use cases for social marketing got our gears turning. We’ve decided that we’re going to have a series of discussions around Social Marketing Use Cases. our next Idea Spark Creativity Coffee marks the beginning of this series. The first use case we’ll discuss is Using Social Marketing for Lead Generation on Friday, October 22. Given the goal to generate more leads, how can social marketing help businesses achieve that goal? How will social channels add to that goal? Which social channels should businesses use? Join us for a lively discussion!
 
Photo Credit: mwookie

Social Media is becoming a new way for brands to market their products and for bands to inform fans of upcoming tour dates, it was only a matter of time that the sports industry would catch on. There are a lot of big names in football on Twitter, including Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens and Drew Brees–and they are really active! These social NFL stars are busy promoting themselves and their teams, and they are even engaging in conversations with fans.

The NFL, however, has been concerned about the impact of social media on the game–especially on the potential misuse and lack of control regarding players tweeting during a game. The league came out with a social media policy last year that prohibits any use of social media by players, coaches, football operations personnel (or anyone updating their accounts on their behalf) from 90 minutes before a game through the completion of official media interviews. Since then, Chad Ochocinco violated that policy once–and was fined $25,000 for the offense.

Social media can be a great way for teams to directly engage fans, but what are the alternatives to game-time interaction with players? The Washington Redskins have found a great way to engage fans socially and complies with NFL guidelines. They are using Foursquare to get fans to “check in” either at the game or an official Redskins bar. Fans who unlock the Redsknis badge are entered to win grand prize of 2 loge tickets and pre-game field passes to tailgate with the Geico Caveman at FedEx Field in Philly!The Redskins are helping fans connect with the team, are driving revenue at local businesses, and are providing new avenues for fan interaction with their Foursquare promotion.

There are many more ways that sports teams–and individual players–can use social media to connect with their fans without violating league rules and practices, and it’s exciting to see players and teams engage more deeply with their most avid fans. We’re likely to see more innovative ways for teams to make fan interaction beneficial to the leagues, the teams, the players and the fans.

How would you like to communicate with your favorite team? Share your ideas here!