Musical Monday Highlight: Hayley Westenra

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One of the many reasons I love Twitter is that I discover some pretty awesome things because they discover me first. Heck, it’s because of Twitter that I discovered WildEarth.tv and was able to share it with you. I always take a look at each new follower when I get a notification because I never know when I’m going to find somebody or something truly remarkable.

One such instance was last week, when I was followed by @HayleyWestenra, whose bio says:

Purpose is to further the distribution of information about singer Hayley Westenra, her upcoming events and albums, and her family.

I have very diverse (if not obscure) musical tastes, and until then, had never heard of her. Intrigued, I followed the link to Hayley Westenra’s official site and was floored by such an amazing voice that loaded on the site’s auto-loading audio player. If you’re a fan of Sarah Brightman, Lorena McKennitt, or other “pretty music” of that vein, you’ll totally dig her.

My first thought was, “HOW is it possible that I haven’t heard of her before?” then upon reading that this 21 year-old soprano New Zealander already has a “Best Of” album, I realized that she’s pretty big all over the world, yet has yet to catch on here in the States.

Here are a few snippets from her official bio:

Hayley Westenra began performing when she was just 6 years old and made her first recording in a professional studio at 12. She was still only 16 when she released her debut international CD, Pure. It rapidly became the fastest-selling debut album from a classical artist, and reached the Top 10 of the pop charts in 11 countries. Her albums have sold more than four million copies worldwide to date. “Pure” was certified by the official UK chart compilers as the best selling classical album of the 21st Century. . .

Hayley has performed for Her Majesty the Queen on a number occasions, President Bush and Tony Blair, Prince Charles, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and in July 2007 Hayley was asked to perform for the Dalai Lama. . .

[She] has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, Wembley Arena, Royal Albert Hall, The White House and Kensington Palace. Hayley sang at Capitol Hill, Washington as part of 2008 official Fourth of July celebrations.

Hayley has duetted with Andrea Bocelli, José Carreras and Bryn Terfel. She has also appeared as a special guest with the World’s leading orchestra’s including the Moscow Philharmonic, The Boston Pops and the RPO.

Not bad for 21, eh?

I promoted Hayley in my Facebook stream because I knew a few people in my friends would like her, and commented that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of her until now. To my surprise, neither had my “vagabond actress friend” Phyllis, and she’s the person I usually rely on to introduce me to stuff like this. Good to know I wasn’t the only one living under a rock. If you haven’t heard of Hayley Westenra until now, take a listen to the widget I’ve embedded and welcome to your newest musical obsession. If you’re moved enough to purchase a piece of her music, here’s an affiliate link to her “Best Of” album at Amazon.

Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor kicks off!

This past Tuesday, June 23, marks the inaugural meeting of Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor*. A bunch of us social media enthusiasts from all over southeast Michigan gathered at the Claddagh Irish Pub in Livonia to discuss our goals and the direction we’d like to see the club go.

What exactly is Social Media Club, you ask? Well, according to the national site,

Social Media Club brings together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaboraters. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. We are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist – we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far. . .

SMC is now a handful of people managing the global organization on a part time basis, and actively working towards hiring full time staff as SMC files the 501c3 and push the organization further into the global space. Thanks to the efforts of our local leaders, we have grown to over 55 active chapters (40+ in the works) with 10’s of 1000’s of people gathering around the world.

Social Media Club has four missions, which are:

1. Expand Media Literacy
2. Share Lessons Learned Among Practitionerss
3. Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards
4. Promote Ethical Practices through Discussion and Actions

Chuck Smith of BlogTalkRadio fame did a great job of capturing snippets of the meeting on video over at his blog, and of course, Charlie of multiple-arena fame was there capturing snippets of everybody and everything for one of his many awesome videos.

Here are some of us talking about our biggest online pet peeve, and I’m (ironically) ranting on how I’ve come to loathe the term “social media”:

What’s your online pet peeve? from Charlie Wollborg on Vimeo.

Also featured in this video are @jesssoul, @chuckSmithMI, @julielyn, @ChrisCCL, @balanon, @sazbean, @rmercader, @davemurr and @bchesnutt. (Follow them, they’re cool.)

I honestly hate seeing myself on video but it’s unavoidable for me these days so I just suck it up and take one for the team. (Besides, I said “people are doing it online,” uh huh huh huh huh . . . )

You can learn more about Social Media Club – Detroit/Ann Arbor at the club’s wiki, including notes from the inaugural meeting, and follow @SMCDA2 on Twitter. There will be a Facebook page soon which will be linked here There is now an official SMCDA2 Facebook page, in addition to the original Facebook group.

Special props go to Dave Murray and Jessica Soulliere for stepping up and putting the club together, and to Tonja Deegan for scribing.

So what would you like to see the SMC – Detroit/Ann Arbor do? Any particular topics you’d like us to cover? And while we’re at it, what’s YOUR online pet peeve?

[Edit - 4:30 PM 6/26/09] Nikki Stephan (who couldn’t make it) commented that she’d like to see the club focus on where social media is going in the future, and that’s actually what I brought up at the meeting. I wasn’t going to embed another video of myself here but Chuck did get it on video so here ya go.  I guess great minds do think alike!

*Technically, I am not really “local” to Detroit, nor Ann Arbor, but all my friends live around there and I hope to be relocating back to Metro Detroit soon.

Are you creating bad “social currency” on Facebook?

Courtney Engle pointed me to this awesome video by Scott Stratten of UnMarketing and it was too good not to share. Scott’s talking about bad “social currency” and the annoying stuff people do on Facebook:

I can totally empathize. There are many people who say that there’s no wrong way to use social media tools, but I think that’s a bunch of baloney. If you do the things that Scott’s describing, you might not think you’re doing anything “wrong,” but the rest of us want to reach through our computer screens and strangle you.

Scott only scratched the surface of  “Don’t Be That Guy on Facebook” — personally my biggest pet peeve is That Guy who has to post the SAME DAMN STUFF to multiple Facebook groups and fan pages. I’m not going to name names, but I’ve got a couple of Those Guys.

People, please — don’t do that.

When you do that, it floods my (unexplainable) “highlights” section on the home page with the same thing over and over, e.g.: “John Doe added these 5 pictures of Event X to the group __”, and “John Doe added these 5 pictures of Event X to the page __,” etc.

If you have a story or some pictures you think might be of interest to people in similar groups or fans of similar things, chances are they’re mostly the same people and you’re spamming them.

FACEBOOK IS NOT FOR SPAMMING.

When you do this, it may appear to you that you know who your audience is because you’re targeting groups and fan pages of similar interest, but if you were really paying attention, you’d notice that it’s mostly the same people and you’re being rude. If you are in multiple groups and pages of similar interest, so is everybody else you’re trying to reach.

Sure, I could choose to “hide” updates and stuff from the people who do this, but then I’d not get the information at all, and I do want to receive the information. Just not over and over and over again.

So if this sounds like you, cut it out. If it sounds like somebody you know but don’t have the heart to tell them, send them a link to this post.

What other annoying things have you noticed people do on Facebook? Rant away!

Social media is not your brand’s “natural male enhancement” pill

Remember these commercials?

You either loved Smiling Bob or you hated him. I thought these commercials were hilarious at first, but after so many euphemisms for “natural male enhancement” and cheesy double entendres, every time I heard that annoying whistling song and saw Smiling Bob’s unnatural-smiling face, I wanted to reach through my TV screen and punch him in the teeth.

However, in a conversation about companies and social media yesterday, Smiling Bob popped (no pun intended) into the forefront my mind. Whether we want to admit it or not, there are a lot of similarities between Enzyte (not linking to them, sorry) and brands’ expectations of social media.

Anybody that fell for these Enzyte commercials bought into the bulls**t that this once-a-day pill would be the answer to all their problems. . . at least in the bedroom (which leads to solving the rest of their problems, apparently). Guess what? It wasn’t.

Consumers who forked over $100 million were sold on this idea, though:

“. . . After a few shorts weeks, Bob has a LANE full of confidence, PRIDE to spare, and now everyone can see that Bob has made some SIZABLE STRIDES to improve his SCORE.”

Many, many businesses seem to think that social media is their Enzyte. That it is some kind of once-a-day thing they do and after a few short weeks, their company will have tons of publicity, they’ll look cool because they’re online, have sizable profits, and an improved overall brand.

Hate to break it to you, but social media is no magic pill that cures everything that ails ya.

We can learn something from Smiling Bob, though. Watch these, and pay attention to the last one, especially:

Let’s substitute a few key words with “social media”:

1. The quality of social media is very important.
2. There’s a proper tool for every social media project.
3. Working with social media can be both fun and rewarding.
4. When it comes to social media, it always helps to listen to an expert.

(I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that the term “social media expert” shares the same degree of ambiguity as Enzyte’s intentional usage of the term “natural male enhancement.”)

According to Wikipedia,

Because Enzyte is an herbal product, no testing is required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. An official of the Federal Trade Commission division that monitors advertising says the lack of scientific testing is “a red flag right away. There’s no science behind these claims.”^[4] The company has conceded that it has no scientific studies that substantiate any of its Enzyte claims.^[5]

So whatever happened to Smiling Bob?

Twenty-five years in prison and over $500 million in fines for massive consumer fraud that “preyed on the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of customers in a case about arrogance and greed.”

I don’t think anybody who promises successful social media strategy and doesn’t deliver the goods is ever going to get sentenced to prison or fined like that — not at all. Nor am I implying that everybody who claims to “do” social media is a Smiling Bob — of course not. But if you think your business can get a quick fix and ahead of your competition with an out-of-the-box social media “strategy” requiring little effort, think again.

Social media can be an enhancement to your overall marketing efforts, but by no means should you think it will solve all your company’s problems. If somebody tells you that, check to see how much they’re smiling at the time.

I encounter people who think social media is the Enzyte for their business quite a bit, and it’s frustrating. What is it about people that makes them think it’s a magic pill? Is it the overblown publicity of the usual case studies, or hearing about it from celebrities and TV networks? Is there something I’m not seeing?

It’s time to play: Computer shortcuts I want for real life!

I had a really bad day the other day and sent out a tweet from my phone that said this:

This is a game I love to play: Computer commands/shortcuts for real life. It came up in a recent conversation on Facebook with Arno, a.k.a. @camera_obscura, one of my South African friends. He said, “My next few weeks will be much easier if I could uninstall the “sleep” function from my body. And also upload information to my brain.”

Amen to that.

I’ve played it before briefly on Twitter, but I’d like to see what we come up with in the comments. So far this is my list of computer commands/shortcuts I want for real life:

• An ESCAPE key for awkward situations.
• *CMD/CTRL+F for things like my car keys.
• CMD/CTRL+Z for “undoing what you just did as you get the sinking feeling that you have officially just been a dumbass” (that one was Arno’s)
• A service like shorten URL that you can plug long meetings into.
• A help file (per Arno’s friend Adrian)
• CMD/CTRL+S to save important things for later
• Copy & Paste to relay important conversations so you don’t get anything wrong.
• CMD+Q to just quickly quit stuff and get on to the next thing.
• CMD++ to make things bigger that are too small . . . like, uh, ice cream sundaes (be creative)
• CMD+- to make things smaller that are too big . . . choose your crisis & shrink it!
• CMD+H to instantly hide
• CMD+O to open doors and stuff
• CMD+R (or F5 for PC users) to refresh . . . could save money on your water bill
• CMD+SHIFT+DELETE to empty the trash . . . nobody likes to do that in real life!

Your turn!

What are some computer commands/shortcuts you’d like to apply in real life?

*Note: I’m a Mac person so I use the CMD key, which is similar to the CTRL key. Your shortcuts may slightly vary if you’re a PC person.

Tweeple: Pwease stop tawking wike Tweety Bird

Since the advent of Twitter, and especially the ever-increasing popularity of its API, there has been an explosion of third-party applications using “tw-” as a prefix. We can list ourselves and find people by profession on  Twellow, measure somebody’s Twinfluence, watch and tweet Twiddeos, and if we have OS X, tweet from our dashboard via Twidget. The list of apps is practically infinite.

Of course, just as naturally, I suppose, has our lexicon increasingly been speckled with the “tw-” prefixed words, referring to anything Twitter-related. We have “tweetups,” refer to each other as “tweeple” or “tweeps,” the world of Twitter is known as the “Twitterverse,” and if we accidentally send a direct message to the public it’s a “twoops.”

There is no shortage of Twitter glossaries out there, but seriously, I think we’ve gone a little too far. The following is not something I am unlikely to hear in real life:

I went to a tweetup to meet my tweeple and got caught in twaffic, but once I got there it was twitterific!  What tweethearts they are! As we were enjoying twitteritas, one twude twinterjected and made a twitfessional that he needed a twatcation because his wife twinks he’s a twitaholic. We said that was twitdiculous!

Seriously?!

Look, folks – I understand the enthusiasm for Twitter. It’s wonderful. I’m practically married to it. But, please, please, PUH-LEASE–

STOP TALKING LIKE TWEETY BIRD!

It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it’s not even coherent most of the time. I don’t mean to be a “mean ol’ puddy tat” here, but every time I hear an adult confound the English language with such absurd Tweety Bird talk, I don’t want to follow them on Twitter — I want to put a helmet on them, give them some crayons, and take their cell phone away.

Is this just my exaggerated imagination, or are you hearing it, too?

blip.fm adds YouTube videos, indie musicians benefit BIG TIME

Once in a while at night while super multitasking (read: not being all that productive because I’m trying to do too much at once), I’m known to blip. For the uninitiated, blip.fm is known as “the Twitter of music,” in that you can play (or “blip”) songs while attaching a little message to them, and you can follow (they say “subscribe”) to other users (”Blip.fm DJs”) much like on Twitter.

A blip on blip.fm:

And to pile on top of all that, you can even integrate it to your Twitter account so that what you blip is tweeted and not just seen by your BlipDJ friends, but by your Twitter followers as well.

A blip on Twitter:

Talk about integration — earlier I decided to blip because I had a song in my head, and suddenly the some of search results had these little TV icons next to them. I didn’t notice at first but HOLY COW is this cool.

This is why it’s important to tag your content.

I have a lot of musician friends, and I don’t upload a lot of stuff to my YouTube channel but when I do, I make sure they’re able to be found with appropriate tags. Case in point, a band that is like family to me, 60 Second Crush:

Three of the first five videos that came up in the search results for them are mine, and all of the results are their band.

So what does this all mean?

This means serious, never-before-reaching exposure for independent musicians like my buddies.

In fact, I found myself blipping quite a few of my friends’ songs that weren’t previously on blip.fm but were on YouTube (including some of my own videos), and are now on both. Blip.fm’s audience is older and spans much farther across the globe than MySpace’s, which had been indie artists’ saving grace until a year or two ago, and I hope I don’t need to remind anyone that MySpace is now in serious danger of dying.

Not to mention that the audience likely has more money (I don’t have figures for this and it’s late so don’t expect me to look them up right now), which means increased sales. Which brings me to another feature I noticed — now if you blip an artist and they’re also on iTunes, there will be a little ad that tells you which album the song is from and a link to buy it from the iTunes store.

(OK, so I know that Natalie Merchant isn’t the best example for a screen shot here but it’s 3:30 a.m. and I’m working with I already had. Trust me — if you’re a smart indie musician with all your ducks in a row and are found on YouTube and/or blip.fm and hooked up on iTunes, it’ll work.)

The only bad thing I noticed, which may have been my own fault, was that the YouTube integration seemed to freeze up my Firefox a few times, which was a real pain in the butt because this is the third time I’ve had to write this paragraph & my auto-save wasn’t auto-saving fast enough. Somebody else on Twitter mentioned that she had trouble with her browser in this, too, but it was pointed out to me that it could be a noscript or script blocking extention I’ve got installed. I’m going to have to check that out but I’m sure it can be resolved easily enough.

Keep in mind that these new features aren’t just great for artists, either. Now that there’s video involved, it’s great exposure for professional music videographers, as well as those who just like to shoot live music for fun.

In case you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about supporting local and independent musicians (and always have been). The internet has really leveled the playing field, if not given them an advantage over the “big dogs,” and if social media strategies are executed properly, the possibilities are endless. This new cross-platform integration is pretty exciting, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

I know I’ve got some indie musicians and their fans reading this, what do you think? Lots of potential or just lots of hype? Blippers, has your browser been crashing, too?

(FYI, some more technical information about the changes and how they came about can be found at gigaom.com.)

Social media is like plastic baggies

This came to me somehow while I was over at Beth Harte’s reading one of her recent posts, where she was discussing social media’s dirty little secret, which is neither dirty nor a secret:

“. . . social media is NOTHING new. If you want to look at social media plain and simple, it’s a bunch of tools that help us to network, share information and build relationships in a different way. The concept of social media from a human relationship aspect is nothing new either.”

I’ve been trying to tell people this for a while, but still, many people just don’t get it. But you know what people do get? Analogies. And do you know what I love? Analogies. Especially when they’re a little offbeat.

Plastic baggies are nothing new.

Call them Glad bags, Ziplock bags, or what have you, y’all know what I’m talking about. And you all have some in a box, in a drawer somewhere in your kitchen, probably hanging out with your aluminum foil and your wax paper.

Like social media, plastic baggies have evolved over time. They come in different sizes, they are different strengths, and they have different features — some are “blue and yellow make green, that’s how you know it’s sealed,” others have a little zipper thing on top to seal them, some have labels where you can write the date. Some, like basic sandwich bags, don’t have seals at all. They all have their different purposes, yet in the end, they all serve the same purpose — to deliver your content in a package while being transparent.

The contents of your plastic baggie are up to you, but the vehicle is essentially the same.

You are responsible for finding the right plastic baggie for your contents, and even if you have the right baggie, the quality of what you put inside it is your responsibility.

You could put a sandwich in a 10″ freezer bag with a label and a zipper on top, send it with your kid to school, and it would still do the job, but not only would that be impractical but your kid would probably get teased. Better to stick with a regular sized sandwich bag, no fancy bells or whistles.

It all comes down to practicality.

But if you had a bunch of loose change you wanted to take to the CoinStar machine at your grocery store, you might not want to use the same little wimpy sandwich bag you use for your kid’s lunch. That 10″ sturdy freezer bag with the zippy is probably your best bet — it’ll carry your change to Kroger without spilling all over your car, and keep it in there until you get to the machine.

Your contents usually dictate what kind of a plastic baggie you’re going to use, not the other way around. Neither should social media tools dictate your content.

Just because YouTube is there, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should be making videos. However, if you have a video or think one might be a good idea (depending on your audience and objectives), you can use YouTube . . . but who’s to say you shouldn’t use Vimeo or Viddler or another video site? Do you know the features of the others? Choosing the right baggie for your content isn’t always easy but it’s an important decision.

So what’s in your baggie, baby? And what kind is it?

Photo by nep.

Finding comfort in transparency

Last week I had a family emergency, and I tweeted it. To my recollection, I don’t remember having ever tweeted anything so. . . heavy like that. I think it’s safe to say that most people, as much as they preach about transparency in social media, probably would not have done that.

I did hesitate — briefly. But I chose to do it for a few reasons:

1. Some of my close “real life” friends are on Twitter, including my BFF Kelly (please tell her to change her username so she doesn’t look like a bot), whose parents are good friends with my parents, and the message would be relayed to the appropriate people.
2. For my own records.
3. I’m a social media transparency purist.
4. I’m also a Twitter addict. (I know, the first part is admitting it.)

Little did I expect to be flooded with 60+ @replies on Twitter when I signed back in that evening. I received multiple direct messages on my phone during the day from many people whom I had never met, and of course, text messages on my phone from those “real life” friends who have my number and knew it’d be OK.

All of these messages were supportive, and many people were praying/sending good vibes, hugs, etc. What I found most interesting, from an observer’s standpoint, is that many people insisted that I keep updating about the situation.

I want to thank everybody who @replied, texted, or direct messaged me throughout all this. Your thoughts, prayers, hugs, well wishes, etc. are much appreciated.

Mom came home on Friday, and the only thing the doctors  can figure out is that the extreme dizziness must’ve been dehydration combined with the wrong dosage of blood pressure medication. Luckily that’s all they can figure out — it could’ve been much worse.

In retrospect, I learned something from this experience, and that is this:

With all of its recent commercialization and mainstream exploitation, the merit of Twitter is still not lost.

In little blurts of 140 characters or less, people all over the world are relating to one another, showing their humanity and sending their support — in other words, people give a damn. Perhaps 140 characters isn’t a limit at all . . . maybe it’s a blessing.

Have you been surprised/overwhelmed at the outcome of support you’ve received on Twitter for anything? Have you tweeted about a personal/family situation that others might not have? What was it like?

Photo by Guanatos Gwyn.

I’m a guest reviewer — that means somebody cares what I think!

(I forgot to post about this last week.)

I was asked by my friend Jackie at The Book Blues online bookstore if I would be the guest reviewer for this month, so I chose to review World Wide Rave, latest from my favorite author, David Meerman Scott.

I’m not going to repost the review here, but if you care to know what I think about it, head on over to The Book Blues and find out. You can also find out how you, too, can become a guest reviewer, and if she picks you, she’ll send you something cool.

Support independent bookstores, online and off.

What do they have that Amazon doesn’t? Personality.

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