Small Social Media

It seems more and more that it is imperative for businesses to start using social media to enhance their business models. From a story on seachenginewatch.com, apparently the number of small businesses using social media is supposed to double in the next year. Currently about 5% of all small businesses use social media and in the next 12 months about 600,000 small American businesses are supposed to start using social media in their business platforms. Not only is social media convenient and can be done from anywhere there’s an Internet connection but its also cost effective. Especially with the economy in the toilet, businesses need cheap ways to gain business and advertise. And as we all know advertising in print media is way to expensive, so now is the time for social media to emerge and help propel are economy.

Awesome Music Site

Whoa!! I found a really cool website called last.fm. It’s basically MySpace on steroids. Not only can bands make profiles and put their music on the Internet. It also is a radio station and lists shows in your area and I gotta say that the radio feature is amazing. You can essentially find any artists you like and listen to their music for free through last.fm. It’s like being your very own music programmer. I immediately started listening to Guns and Roses songs, and was amazed at the amount of songs they have for you to listen too. They also have videos for each song ,too! Check it out you won’t be disappointed.

The process of creating a video on a social issue for our class was definitely a daunting process. Though I had a lot of fun creating the video, figuring out which program to use was a nightmare. I first started using Jay Cut, which seems to be a very simple and perfect program to use. But when I began to try and upload my song to it, it turned into a nightmare. I then tried Sprout Builder, which seemed to be more for photos than anything. At 2:00 AM I decided to try and learn the program but once again uploading a song was super annoying. I started to upload the song but after 20 minutes it was at 8% so I got frustrated and moved to the next program, Animoto. Apparently, Animoto is supposed to be a really good program but if you want to make a video over 30 seconds then you have to pay and I ain’t paying! So I finally found Jump Cut (music plays Hallelujah). After about 20 minutes I had Jump Cut figured out and began to start having fun making a video.

For my video I decided to do it on cheating and it’s influence on American marriages. To me there’s always tragedy in comedy and I felt that by making this movie funny it could help ease the pain that many of us have once felt. So here it is, have a laugh:

An Indication Of How President Obama Will Use Social Media

We have all recently blogged about the extensive use of social media for Barak Obama’s campaign for presidency. After his win, we all sort of wondered how Obama would use social media after he officially becomes the president of the United States. In the article Obama White House to Broadcast Weekly Radio Address on YouTube, found on mashable.com by Adam Ostrow, apparently President Obama will be putting weekly video addresses on YouTube. The videos will also be posted on change.gov. The Obama administration is also likely to launch their very own YouTube channel. It seems as though we were all right to predict that he would continue using social media to communicate to the American people. It’s also noted in the article that Obama hasn’t used twitter since November 5th. Come on Barack, tweet it up!

Obamitter

As we all know, Barack “The social media guru” Obama is the new president of the United States. It’s been well stated and observed that Obama used social media tools like Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and barackobama.com to lead his campaign, raise money and motivate the public to get out the vote. But know that he’s in office what will his social media sites focus on now? You would think that with all the people now attached to his social media heal that he would appoint the first social media position in the White House. Who knows, social media could be the new form of nuclear weaponry for the United States. Maybe the way to kill Osama Bin Laden is to tweet him to death.

But realistically does this mean that we, citizens, will be directly connected to congressmen and women through social media. Maybe congress will twitter in their votes and use it organize community service. But one thing we do know is that it will be used heavily in 2012 for the next presidential race. And if Obama plans to run again then he will be getting started in 2 years and who knows what social media tools he’ll be using then.

Poverty: Social Video Awareness

After discussing our web video assignment in class I was interested in watching some videos to help me brainstorm. I decided to see what kinds of videos were produced on poverty. After watching several videos the best one I found was Poverty The Numbers. This video does a great job at presenting facts with disturbing and realistic depictions of poverty. The video is obviously not done by a filmmaker or someone with a budget but is a good example of amateur video social awareness. It also has the Peter Gabriel song, “Don’t Give Up” which is an awesome song and it fits perfectly with the mood of the video. Here are some of the facts presented in the video, check it out:




35 million Americans live in poverty
18 percent of children live in poverty
45 million Americans live without heath care
1 in 4 American immigrants children live in poverty
1 in 3 minorities live in poverty
3 billion people live off of less than $2 a day
1 billion people can’t read or write
121 million children out of education
30,000 children die of poverty per day and 210,000 per week
America ranks last in a UNICEF report on child well being in developed nations

Music On Podcasts

As we began to work on our podcast the idea came up about using an actual song instead of a jingle. Funny thing is up until recently it was absolutely illegal to do so. In the article, Music Industry Changes It’s Tune On Podcasting from the Wall Street Journal, writer Ethan Smith explains the relationship between the music industry and podcasting. In fact, recently the industry has decided to embrace licensing for podcasting but still really hasn’t found the proper way to collect royalties on it. Currently there are only a few ways in which one can use a song for a podcast and that idea is centered on the podcaster paying a flat fee.

In the ever-changing world of the music on the Internet I find it funny that the music industry is still so far behind in letting their products be represented on the World Wide Web. It always feels like the industry is at least 10 years behind on everything. Instead of embracing illegal downloading and changing their business models they choose to prosecute it. Why must they move so slow on these issues? The sad thing is that podcasting is just another lucrative business venture for artists to explore but still the industry doesn’t want to embrace it. The record industry is so caught up on control that they have let their selfishness get in the way of taking advantage of these great ways to expose artists. Come on big corporate music big wigs; figure it out cause as usual your just holding artists back from making money from their music.

Covert Curiosity, A Good Music Blog

If you don’t know by now, my “job” is recording and producing bands. I have made it a huge priority to try and use these social media tools we learn about in class to find more clients (bands) in the local Austin music scene. As I have been exploring the Austin music scene’s blogosphere it seems that Covert Curiosity is the leading blog voice about music. Based in Austin, Covert Curiosity does a great job at providing an entertaining music related blog. Not only do they update their blog daily but they provide their audience with a look at unknown bands around the world with mp3 samples and intellectual insights about music. They also have tons of links to other blogs and a calendar highlighting some of the great shows to see in Austin.

The only thing I wish they would do more, is blog more, about local bands. I imagine their interested in having a larger fan base than just Austin, so that is hopefully why they don’t spend enough time on the scene. But for someone who knows that there is an abundance of great music in Austin, it would be nice for someone to inform the public about bands other than the Austin Chronicle.

But all in all, it is a good blog and I recommend it and it’s “ad free” too. Also I recommend checking out our fellow communication major friend Ian Morales’ blog, Ian’s Music Blog. Ian is honest and has a great love for music.

You Twitt Er

I recently decided to explore another social media Internet tool called Twitter. Twitter is sort of a combination between instant messaging and blogging. It's blog feature is similar to Facebook's status update but your able to write up to 150 words while at the same time your allowed to have direct contact with other twitter members. You can also follow different twitter members and read their daily blogs (tweets) while others are allowed to follow your blog.

After having a twitter account for more than a week I’m now following 8 people and 6 are following me. I’ve found it to be interesting but I haven’t been able to fully explore it since its search engine has not been working the whole time. Hey Twitter fix your search engine!!! It’s been more than a week!!! Needless to say I’ve been less than impressed with Twitter. I’ve heard that it has such a great upside but yet I haven’t been able to explore it. Hopefully they will fix it soon. Also if you’re on Twitter follow me and I’ll follow you. I’m located at http://twitter.com/adamraven.

Quad 3 Podcast

The group podcast assignment was yet another great way to explore the Internet and social media. For our podcast we interviewed Kristine Gloria from Waggener Edstrom PR firm. Kristine is an account executive at Waggener Edstrom and was very insightful on the current world of social media. We recorded and produced the podcast at Premium Recording Service and I Royal Raven was the announcer while Ashley and Sloan conducted the interview. Here is a brief outline so you can follow along with the podcast.

0:00 Intro

0:35 Describe Wagner Edstrom and your role at the firm?

a. Wagenner Edstrom (WagEd) specializes in technology and is incredibly relationship oriented. Specifically, WagEd has a long track record with Microsoft.

b. Kristine Gloria is the liaison with account work and digital strategies.

1:17 How has social media evolved and what is your role?

a. Social media has grown from social networks such as Facebook, to micro blogging on Twitter, and has developed into a tool for both personal and professional purposes.

WagEd often uses LinkedIn to do bio searches on their clients and future employees.

b. Kristine's role has been to implement these tools in the business. She is not an early adopter, but watches the space closely.

2:27 How did you gain an initial awareness of social media and how have you implemented it at Waggener Edstrom?

a. SXSW 2007: Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg Interview and the importance of Twitter

b. Took this momentum to the office.

i. Began a WE Digital Think Tank

4:06 What forms of social media do you use and how does it benefit you as a P.R. firm?

a. Twitter: "Everyday, every hour"

i. Relationships with reporters

b. Facebook

c. LinkedIn: Bio searching specifically

5:11 Commercial

a. FriendorFollow.com

5:41 What is Wagner Edstrom's involvement with the blogosphere and how do you approach bloggers with pitches?

a. Active bloggers on external side of WagEd as marketing

b. Use of blogs internally

6:13 What do you think the relationship between bloggers and P.R. firms should be?

a. Understanding the avenue of communication is key

b. Building relationships is essential

c. Bloggers write what they want to write-it's not personal

6:50 What social media tools do you use on an everyday basis and how have these tools expanded your personal and professional relationships?

a. Keep things professional

b. Social media has helped expand Kristine's network

i. Helps others understand social media tools

7:41 You mentioned social media as a double-edged sword, can you elaborate on this?

a. Blurs personal and professional life

b. Social Media is extremely self-involved

c. You must be in tune to your own personal brand

i. Austin 3.0

9:12 Where do you see social media going in the future in both public relations and personal lives?

a. Kristine does not see blogging as taking over the journalistic venue

b. The public will begin to understand idea of the "double edged sword."

9:53 Outro

Poverty: Blog Action Day

As the rents in Austin begin to rise, the rich is getting richer but unfortunately the poor is still poor. Though recent studies have shown that the percentage of poor people in Austin has dropped by .5% it still hasn’t disappeared (Austin Business Journal). So what can we do? Well, as a St. Edwards University student myself I have noticed drop sites for non-perishable food items. Also one place you can contact to help is the Community Partnership for the Homeless at austinhomelessness.org. Founded in 1990 Community partnership mission is to help end homelessness by providing safe, affordable housing and access to supportive services.


Lets also be respectful of the conditions in Africa where the poverty conditions are far worse. In a nation of war and genocide, the world has not put in enough effort to stop the humanitarian crisis. So may are prayers be with them also, and may we make an effort to stop poverty around the world.

Thinking Of A Silver State

Recently my friends the band Lazertag entered their music video, “Silver State” in a contest on the website ourstage.com and won. Directed by my ex roommate Brad Ungar, the video chronicles Lazertag’s (Mitch Buttress and Ryan Spratt) journey from San Francisco to Austin for South By Southwest. The video is great and the song is too. Some highlights include the band playing in my friend Israel’s truck and Ryan eating a cupcake from Austin’s own, Hey Cupcake. There's an interview with my friends Lazertag. Apparently their video was viewed by over a 1000 people and has created some new fans for them and of course they won $1000. This is a great example of how bands can use social media to promote themselves over the internet. Here they uploaded there video and got people to vote for it and in the end exposed themselves to a whole new audience, all thanks to social media and the Internet.

Garage Band

After going through some of the basic features in Garage Band in class on Tuesday, I went home that night and started playing around with the software. As an audio engineer/producer I always use the software Pro Tools by Digidesign and have just used GarageBand for basic sound recordings for songwriting but as I began to amerce myself in it I found it was quite refreshing. It’s nowhere as detailed as a program as Pro Tools but GarageBand has a lot of cool stuff on it. First of all, it has a bunch of different loops and sounds that you can use to create a song. After playing with it for 20 minutes I had created a whole instrumental song with: drums, dance beats, bass, guitar, synths, piano and strings. It was really simple too, just locate the sound file you want and drag it on to a track. The key here is to set it to snap to the grid! Which can be found under the control tab. This way when you move sounds around it will always be adjusted by the right time-frame, meaning that it will always be on the the same beat as the rest of the tracks. Check it out, you’ll be surprised how easy it is.

Facebook Privacy

I recently was sitting in class next to my friend and was on my Facebook homepage when she noticed that her info was popping up in my news feed. She was shocked! She had no clue that every picture she posts, every time she is tagged in a photo, and when she talks to a mutual friend that the info pops up in my reader. I too at first had no idea this was going on and have recently stopped all my stupid narcissistic status updates and have taken away information on my profile. As a person who does not believe that the Internet has ever been or ever will be private I have always used a different last name for my profiles. I’m not surprised to hear about all the privacy issues on Facebook discussed in class. It is an Internet site designed for one to spy on another so it’s likely that while its users explore others personal information, its not surprising that the company is allowing other businesses to do the same.

Music Business Blogging

Since the good ole days of Napster we have seen the music business completely transform itself into an independent Internet based business. As a producer/engineer, I solely work with independent bands that are managing and financing their own careers. The Future Of The Music business blog is a great way to read about the current state of the industry.

http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/

There are many fascinating posts on this blogspot. There’s a great piece on how since CD sales have dropped so much most bands are solely basing their businesses around touring and merchandise sales. The record companies are changing their models too and are offering artists better money if they sign deals that include more than just recording rights. Generally referred to as “360 deals” because they seek to cover every facet of an artist’s career, including publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing, the new deals are a way for record companies to hedge their bets in a declining record market and to recast themselves as music — rather than just recording — companies.

Also on the sight are statistics on the how people are purchasing music and in which ways they are listening to music. Concluding that many people listen more to AM/FM radio when compared to digital music players, computers, CDs and satellite radio. Also CD sales are still the primary way people are buying music.

I Stumbled Upon My ACL

After an exciting ACL weekend I was in search of something to blog about in relation to the festival. As I typed in ACL on Google I was hoping to find an official ACL blog. Well I found one but it had nothing to do with music. In fact it had everything to do with ACL surgery in India.

In recent we have seen the emergence of India as a major player in the world’s medical and research community.

http://www.orthopedicsurgeryindia.blogspot.com/

Is an interesting blog, which advertises the great arthroscopic surgeries of Dr.A.K.Venkatachalam’s treatment center. His center is geared towards American and British patients. On the blog you can check out videos and picture testimonies of English speaking Indians showing the wonderful results of their surgeries. Also, there is an avatar-narrator, Mimi, summarizing the website. Weird but kinda cool. I think it’s fascinating how you can shop medical surgeries through social media. I found the testimonies interesting and realistic and the photos revealing and kind of gross. Check it out.

Corporate Blogging

In class this week we talked about the idea of corporate blogging and how it can be a great way to inform customers on products, and also a way for CEO hot heads to lose their cool and blow their credibility. As I began searching for corporate blogs on the Internet I found that it was rather scarce to actually find one. In our textbook The New Influencers, it is stated that only 10% of all corporations have blogs. But why wouldn’t these corporations want to communicate better with their customers or employees? Take for example Clear Channel, who is the biggest radio corporation, they have no blog.

As of late Clear Channel has had a lot to talk about too. They have officially made the company private. It has been sold to investors and there is now no more public stock. They have also been adamant on stopping the Sirius/XM Satellite merger and it’s estimated that they spent over half a million dollars on lobbyists trying to stop the merger. My father has been a Clear Channel employee for over 10 years and could benefit from a blog. First of all, he had no idea that they had such distaste for the Satellite merger and up until recently had not received details on the reason for the hold on the company going from public to private. It is now officially private and he had been waiting for it to go through so he could sell his stock. Even though some of these issues are private at least a blog would help inform Clear Channel's employees and create a forum for discussing information about the company. Personally I think corporations fear this level of communication and aren't interested in pleasing anyone except their pocket books. Of course they would get a lot of negative comments on their blog since they are definitely one of the most hated corporations in America and it might be hard to manage it in a constructive way.

Webutation

We recently discussed the idea of Googling oneself in class. But what if your narcissism is larger than just finding out if you’re on the web. What if you want to see what people are actually saying about you and what your web reputation is? Then maybe you should check out Twing.com.



Twing is a search engine forum, which tracks individuals and businesses reputations. It has two reputation search engines: Saved Search and Buzz Graph. The search engines mainly focus on forums and find out exactly what is being discussed about you or your business. Need brand management and protection then check out twing.

Kings Of Leon Rock Internet PR

As a musician/music snob it’s rare these days that I find myself inspired and appreciative of a new band. In 2007, The Kings Of Leon released “Because Of The Times” and made the best album of that year and converted me into a super-fan. On September 23rd they are releasing the highly anticipated album, “Only By The Night,” and promoting it with an Internet publicity campaign by releasing a daily video blog.

The videos are highly entertaining and include all things music: with the band in the studio recording the album and shooting a music video for the song, “Sex On Fire.” They also include all things comedy: with the band snorting wasabi, hitting the bong, attending an Oklahoma University football game and exposing their southern podunk family (the band is made up of 3 brothers and a cousin).
Currently you can listen to songs “Sex On Fire” and “Crawl” at myspace.com/kingsofleon and kingsofleon.com

Blogger Gate

As I become more and more fascinated about the circus of emotions that surrounds this election and began a journey to the center of the blog world. How are our 2 presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain using the blogosphere? This medium is essentially a one on one with any person with a computer in the world and a perfect way to explain exactly what you stand for.

First things first, here are their blogs:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Blog/

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog/

After viewing both blogs, my overall assessment would be un-achieving. Neither candidate gives a descriptive answer while their blog acts like an extensive itinerary portraying their political lives. The total amount of self-addressed blogs on their pages is 0, instead just scripter of their speeches, campaign ads and donation links.

By the way this blog is not intended for political debate but for the idea how a presidential candidate is using such a new and sensitive medium.

I’m Royal Raven and I approve this blog

To Blog And How To Blog, That Is The Question

As I take my first baby steps into the blogosphere, and start blogging, a lot of warnings have been issued to use proper etiquette. I have also heard that former students have violated these so-called etiquette rules and been punished by death. So what is blogger etiquette?

Here are a few tips on blogger manners:

1. George Carlin’s 7 dirty words are off limits!

2. Credit your sources. This is probably the No. 1 rule in blogger etiquette. If you got the facts, story, picture, video, and etc., from somewhere, credit that source. To a lesser extent, if you got an idea from somewhere, it would be nice to credit that source as well (though many will say this is unnecessary) (http://bloghelper.is-there.net).

3. Be constructive and honest in your comments.

4. "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you." If you want to people to read your blog then read theirs and leave comments.

5. When leaving a comment on a blog for the first time, let the author know how you found his/her blog, especially if you found it through a link on another blog.

6. Be open to other or outside opinions. Remember that different opinions make the blog go around.

7. Never publish information that you know is inaccurate.

8. Expose unethical behavior of other bloggers.

9. It’s just a blog! Don’t believe somebody had a handicapped baby because you saw it in a blog.

10. Never stop blogging!