Why Musicians Should Use Flickr...

1. The #1 REASON - It Helps You Build Your Fan Base. One of the best things about Flickr (unlike say Kodak.com) is you can search and make friends and contacts and join groups and make new fans and friends!

2. If blogging overwhelms you with all of the writing, it's a perfect choice. All you need to do is upload photos from your cell phone or digital camera, create brief captions and tag things properly and voila!

3. It's a great way for your fans to see other dimensions of you and get "behind the scenes."

4. You can create multiple sets and break them up by categories within your site so people that are interested, in live music, could go to your live shots. Or people that are interested in candid shots of the band having fun can go to those shots.

5. You can join several Flickr groups and network with others by leaving comments on their photos

6. You can create sets that will drive traffic by linking to other groups (Music Festivals, Live Shots, Fan shots etc.- I included a list to get you started below)

7. You Can Use It To Promote Your Own Site. As people come and browse your photos be sure to include links to your site to drive traffic to you.

8. You Can Create Cool Digital POSTCARDS to send to your fans. Flickr has a wonderful sister site called Delivr that allows you to send any of your photos as a postcard: Click Here: http://www.delivr.net/

9. Start Your Own Flickr Group & Get Known. In addition to your personal page you can start a group and invite others to join - perhaps it can be "backstage shots" or "on-the-road photos" or "musicians and their dogs" - get creative - start an new community that no one has thought of yet.

10. Get the cutest / coolest calling cards on earth. Flickr works with a site called Moo and they make the greatest little cards with assorted photos on each - a cool and creative way to share your info: http://www.moo.com/flickr/

Some Photo Set Ideas

Here are some ideas for grouping your newly uploaded photos…

Fans In The Audience - You can create a whole album of just fans by taking pictures of fans at your shows

Posed Shots Of Fans - Ask your fans that are loyal followers send in great photos of themselves with captions they create. This will keep your fans coming back to see themselves.

Food - Take photos of all the food you eat on the road or take a picture of your lunch every day and make a photo plates diary.

Behind The Scenes - Take pictures of you in the studio, you loading your gear into a club, you writing music, you buying instruments, and add comments about what the life of a musician is from behind the scenes.

Music Festivals / Conferences - When you go to CMJ, SXSW etc. you can maximize your experience by covering all events. Many of these music festivals have their own Flickr sites so you can upload those photo sets directly to each Flickr group and use them to network with the people that were there.

Band Candids - Out takes from photo shoots and videos. Live shots.

TIP - How To Add A Contact (This Took Me A Minute To Figure Out)

Simply click on the image of the person (the Buddy Icon) you want to add and a menu will pop up and direct you!

Loads of questions can be answered here if you get stuck:

http://www.flickr.com/help/faq/
Original Post from Cyber PR

VIDEO: The Social Media Revolution!

This is a great little video that visualises the latest social media statistics in a punchy 4 minute video. It's a new way of looking at it - with some great statistic! Hope you enjoy!



Social media IS the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution! This video provides a range of great stats like these...

* By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
* 96% of them have joined a social network
* 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year have met via
social media
* Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months
* If Facebook would be a country, it would be the world's
4th largest
* 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool
to find employees
* 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices.
People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that
means for bad customer experiences?
* In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses
to incoming freshmen
* YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
* There are over 200.000.000 Blogs. 54% of bloggers post
content or tweet daily.

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/the-social-media-revolution-visualised/

Original Post on Digital BuzzBlog

Social Media Does Increase Revenues

Would be great to try and get a model together for how social media should definitively be measured. There are ever-increasing calls for this ROI to rather be perceived as a Return on Engagement.

There are many case studies showing how beneficial and profitable social media can indeed be, but the question remains:

What are we measuring and is there a way of working it out? What should we put into a social media campaigns and how much of that affects overall sales to help us meet our goals and ROI?

....................................

So, here's the big one, does spending on social media really pay back? A fresh MBA graduate from MIT, Niki Gomez, passing through London and We Are Social on her way to Mumbai, gives her views.

At last, a study quantifies what many of us felt must be true, that social media does translate into increased sales. As Violette mentioned last week, a study by Wetpaint and Charlene Li's Altimeter Group shows an extremely strong correlation between engaging in different social media and earning higher revenues. The study looks at the engagement of top 100 brands from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands report and ranks them from 1 to 127, based on how they use social media channels. It finds that the top brands with their rankings in brackets are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The most engaged brands experienced revenue growth in 2008 of 18% whilst the least engaged brands experienced losses of negative 6% over the same period.

Also interesting is that only arguably half of these are internet companies. The study categorizes the brands, a la Malcolm Gladwell, into mavens, those heavily engaging in 7 or more channels, such as Starbucks and Dell; butterflies, such as American Express and Hyundai who engage with seven channels but with less engagement; selectives who engage in six or less but do some on a deep level such as H&M and Philips; wallflowers like BP and McDonalds who engage with six or less but with a light touch. My question was whether social media pays off because of lower marketing spend, as there is a shift from spending on more traditional channels. However it seems, revenues, actual sales are up on previous years, even boom times!

Their findings conclude that it is not how many social media channels you use, but how deep that engagement is: so being social pays, but it's the quality rather than quantity of these conversations that seems to triumph yet again. So, please think before you tweet... a good piece of advice for brands and individuals alike.

Social Media Does Increase Revenues

FriendFeed vs. Chi.mp vs. Ping.fm

These are three social media tools that help you speak to your networks from one central place! That way you don't have to log into multiple sites again and again - yet can still reach out to all of your networks. With just one click you can update your status across A TON of different websites,, blogs, and social networks!

These are a great utility and if you haven't started using them - I highly recommend doing so. So far with the research I have done...I have found FriendFeed the best. WHY? Because they have the most relevant list of sites I would like to post to. Ping.fm was a bit limited and Chi.mp was a somewhat limited as well. However...its my guess these two competitors will step it up a notch and try to stay in the running game.

CLICK IMAGE BELOW FOR LARGER VIEW