Deftones Engage Fan Base With Instagram Contest

Deftones Instagram ContestSacramento hard-rock band the Deftones have been early-adopters of internet technology to stay connected to their fans and it’s paid off. While other rock bands of the late 90s and early 00s have faded from relevance and any measure of success, the Deftones have continued to release new material to a vibrant and eager fan base.

The latest tool the band interactive arsenal is the iPhone photo sharing app Instagram, where they already have over 9300 followers. During their current North American tour they are asking fans to post and tag (#deftones #cityofconcert) the best photos from each tour stop. Each day one photo will be named the “Fan Instagr.am of the day and will be featured on the Deftones Facebook wall. At the end of the tour all featured photos will be entered in a draw for a grand prize of an ESP guitar and 5 runner up prizes of a signed copy of their 1997 breakthrough album ‘Around the Fur’.

Their website features a long-running Community area which was first established in 2000 with DeftonesWorld, over the years an area for fan posts and the Sharing Lungs forum were added.

The band has a solid and established presence across all the major social networks: their YouTube channel has 36,390 subscribers and millions of views, their MySpace page has 615,533 friends, the Deftones iLike profile shows 423,112 friends, on Twitter they tweet to 84,904 followers, and biggest of all, the Facebook fan page with 1,385,723 Likes.

Bands, like any company or organization cannot be complacent about staying engaged with their fans. They can no longer afford to wait on the chance of one big hit album, instead they must rely on maintaining a loyal fanbase with a long term vision. This is something than bands like the Deftones understand and remain focussed on.

‘You’ve Seen the Butcher’ from Deftones 2010 album ‘Diamond Eyes’.

Ben & Jerry’s Wants Your Unused Characters to Promote Fair Trade

Do you want to do good with your Tweets but don’t feel particularly chatty. Well, good news for you, Ben & Jerry’s wants to put those unused characters in your tweets to good use. They’ve released a cool Twitter application to promote Fair Trade Day on may 14. You enter your message as normal using the app, the space left over in your tweet is instantly filled with a customized message and link to an applicable article about the fair trade movement.

The application can also work as a Chrome of Firefox browser plugin. You can use up 133 characters in your tweet (I checked), and still include a Fair Trade Message. Now that message is very short and consists of “| > #FT”.

A fun and easy way to spread the message

Who’s Winning? NHL Teams: Social Media, Attendance & Performance

With the 2010-11 Stanley Cup playoffs now in full swing, I was curious to see which NHL teams ranked highest for Facebook Likes and Twitter follows. OK before you start, I realize there are a lot more factors to consider in ranking an organization’s social media efforts than just the numbers. They all likely have sophisticated social media strategies that tie back to important business objectives, putting butts in the seats and selling merchandise – while icing an exciting team that is capable of going deep into the playoffs to provide even more revenue.

After I had collected the numbers from the team’s official Facebook and Twitter profiles it became obvious (but not surprising) that organizations with history and solid efforts such over the past few seasons ranked over the teams that have struggled. I decided it would be worthwhile to add in rankings for average game attendance (butts in seats) and their position in the overall standings at the end of the year.

The NHL puts a lot of effort into how teams manage their internet sites, the most obvious being the common template shared by all teams. The template is being stretched to its limits by the individual teams as links to social media can appear in a number of ways, from a local in the header, a link in the footer, a widget within the page of a link that can appear in any number of places within the sub navigation.

Onto the Numbers

The teams with the most followers on Twitter are Montreal (126,938), Vancouver (90,409) and Pittsburgh (81,981) while the teams with the most followers on Facebook are last years champions, Chicago (712,308), Montreal (653,510) and Boston (593,575). Teams with a long rich history such as the Original Six (Canadians, Hawks, Wings, Bruins, Leafs, & Rangers) all ranked within the top 11.

As expected teams like Toronto and Calgary with loyal fan bases had solid scores with social media and attendance but were pulled down by their poor performance this year.

Rankings

I added each team’s ranking for Facebook, Twitter, average game attendance and points together and then sorted them by the best scores. This ranking was created for my own entertainment (yes, I found this entertaining), let me know if you find anything interesting in the results.

NHL Rankings - Twitter, Facebook, Attendance, Standings
Attendance figures from ESPN
End of season rankings from NHL.com

Status Update: Cobra Found, Bronx Zoo Site Goes Down

Bronx Zoo Cobra foundYou can expect it to be slithering room only (ugh, I know) when the Bronx Zoo’s Reptile House re-opens in a week or so. The missing 24-inch venomous Egyptian cobra that captured the imagination of the people of New York City and around the world has been found. The snake which was only a few months was found in an dark and quiet area of the reptile house that she originally disappeared from last Saturday.

It was a social media coup for the Bronx Zoo that no one could have planned better if they tried. National and international news coverage with jokes and skits on every late night variety show. The traffic and attention on the recovery of the snake even brought down the Zoo’s website Thursday, leaving administrators to post this message on the home page, “We found our cobra, but lost our websites – Due to extremely high traffic about our Egyptian Cobra, our sites are temporarily unavailable.”

One of the most imaginative and entertaining outlets during the past week was a great @BronxZoosCobra Twitter account that has amassed over 200,000 followers in just 4 days. The Bronx Zoo itself picked up several thousand Twitter followers during the week. Here are a few of my favorite Tweets from the Cobra… or should those be Hisses? (ugh, again)

“If you see a bag of peanuts inexplicably moving along the ground at Yankee Stadium today. Just ignore it. It’s probably nothing.”

“Got a bagel at H & H Bagels on upper west side. When I ordered I said, “I’ll have the snakes on a PLAIN.” He did not laugh. Tough crowd.”

“Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice?”

“Rockefeller Plaza is amaz….wait…OMG! Tina Fey totally just walked by me! HUUUUGE FAN! #snakeonthetown”

I’m sure no one at the Bronx Zoo ever imagined the volumes of great PR they would get during the snake’s escape, but its great to see that everything has come to a happy ending for everyone. I know where I’ll be heading next time I’m in New York City.

KLM Hosts Dance Party at 35,000 Feet

In February Dutch airline KLM tweeted that they would be re-opening their route between Amsterdam and Miami on March 27, 2011, Dutch DJ Sied van Riel (@SiedVanRiel) and filmmaker Wilco Jung (@WilcoJung) responded with a tweet expressing their disappointment that this was a week too late to make it to the Ultra Music Festival.

They tweeted “I bet we could fill a plane with house music dutchies who go to WMC miami”.

KLM responded to the challenge with a tweet the said “You fill the plane, we’ll try to fly!”

KLM challenged Sied and Wilco to gather 150 pre-registrations within seven days and they would fly. They gathered the 150 in just 5 hours. Within a few days they launched a website, twitter account. When the dust had settled they had gathered an amazing 426 registrations for the flight.

On March 21, the flight took off from Amsterdam. When the plane had reached 35,000 feet, the DJ started spinning, drinks were served and the transatlantic party was on.

This is a great example of a company listening and responding to its customers. They could have easily ignored the tweet from Sied and Wilco, or responded with a polite ‘we’re looking into it’. Instead the people behind the KLM social media program acted in the spirit of creativity and openness. I’d love to know what took place behind the scenes at KLM as the challenge was made and then met. Great work KLM.

Related Posts

Randy MathesonI am a Nova Scotia raised Creative Guy, currently Director of Emerging Media at Delvinia, a Digital Strategy & Customer Experience Design Firm in Toronto. I’m a huge fan of the creative use of digital technologies in social media, marketing, sports and entertainment. I use this blog to share the more interesting examples that I find. If you’re in need of a break, join me over at Madtini.com for a cocktail.

Spring Is Here and So Is TwestivalTO

TwestivalTOI’ve always been amused by people who ask me if ever have time to meet people in real life. I think they believe that most of us who are heavy users of social networks spend our days and nights typing away in dark basements, ordering in food and reveling in our dark gloomy virtual lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth of course and social networks, especially Twitter have allowed people to connect and share interests like never before. I attended my first Tweetup in October of 2009, a second one in November, then my first Twestival in February of 2009. In 3 months I had met more people in the Toronto creative and tech industry than I had met in the previous 15 years of conferences and industry meetups. Since then these people have become close friends, drinking pals, colleagues and coworkers.

These events are a perfect chance to meet your online friends in real life and support great causes, and Toronto is blessed with people who are willing to step up, organize, sponsor and volunteer to make these events. Other events to consider are Sprouter’s SproutUp, Third Tuesday, GenYTO, Patio Fridays, the Gladstone Hotel’s monthly Tweetgasm meetup, Democamp and Podcamp. Some events are hanging our for food and a drink, while others feature guest speakers and panel discussions.

This Thursday, marks the third Twestival Local to be held in Toronto. It’s all happening March 24 from 7pm to 1am at The Fifth located at 225 Richmond Street West in the Entertainment District of Downtown Toronto. The fundraising goal is $25,000 and as of today they are almost halfway there.

This year the proceeds will go to benefit the REMIX Project, a collection of programs which seeks to help introduce young people from disadvantages, marginalized or under served communities who are seeking to enter into creative industries or further their formal education. Check out this series of success stories.

Sponsors who’ve stepped up to support TwestivalTO include Creative Niche, Rogers, Evoke Salon, Hill & Knowlton, GlobalLink Imaging and MarketWire/Sysomos.

It’s not too late to come out and support this great cause too, purchase your $20 tickets today.

Share Your Breakfast Pictures and Help Fight Hunger

Kellogg's Share Your BreakfastFor the social media naysayers who’ve been quick with the “I don’t care what people have for breakfast” statement, Kellogg’s new campaign Share Your Breakfast will make them nuts.

But everyone eats breakfast, so maybe they won’t mind eating their words for a good cause – hopefully with a large bowl of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes – and what the heck, throw in a side of bacon too.

Kellogg’s wants Americans to share pictures of their breakfasts at ShareYourBreakfast.com as part of National Breakfast Day (March 8), a day created to raise awareness of how important it is, especially for children, to start the day with a nutritious healthy breakfast.

With every breakfast image uploaded, Kellogg’s will donate one breakfast to a child in need, with a goal is to reach one million shared breakfasts. If you’ve already eaten breakfast there’s no need to worry, you can simply text a description of your meal with the word SHARE.

One of the interesting areas of the site is the Discover section. Here you can select a breakfast food and see which States shared that food as part of their breakfast. You can then roll over each State to get the exact percentage.

The good people of Wyoming and Maine are leading the nation in bacon as part of their breakfast, while it looks like North Dakota and Mississippi folks love their yogurt first thing in the morning.

Charlie Sheen, Winning… or Losing on the Web?

Charlie Sheen on Twitter and UStreamBooze and drug-fueled Las Vegas weekends with porn stars, emergency hospital stays, bizarre rambling interviews filled with outrageous quotes – and that’s just in the first few months of 2011. Charlie Sheen has been a very busy boy recently, and now he’s moving his one man show the social media world.

Last week Charlie signed up to Twitter, amassing over a million followers in just over 24 hours, and has almost 2 million as of just a few minutes ago. He’s managed an unheard of Klout score of 91, more than such up-and-comers Ellen, Oprah, Ashton Kurcher and even some guy called Barack Obama. This brings up a whole other question about what ‘real’ influence is, which I’ll get into in a future post. For now I’ll link you to Saul Colt’s latest post “If Charlie Sheen told you to jump out a window: A lesson in Influence“.

On Saturday night Charlie went live on UStream with Sheen’s Corner, a loose, rambling 50 minute ‘show’ featuring Charlie, his buddies and unfortunately just one goddess riffing on a slew or random subjects. The show attracted more than 100,000 viewers at one point, which surely included legions of the curious seeing as how the numbers dropped throughout the 50 minutes to as little as 30,000 at the halfway point.

So, why are so many of us interested. Why are so many people following him on Twitter or bothering to tune in and watch a streamed, unrehearsed Charlie Sheen chat show? The folks over at Psychology-Advice.net theorize that our attraction is a form of Introjective Identification.

Introjective Identification is the psychological process of taking someone into our being and experiencing that as if we were them. It is usually done with regard to positive figures from Jesus Christ to God to role models, but it can also be done with regard to very negative and self-destructive people like Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan and others.

And on the internet we get a minute-by-minute close-up view. Its all Charlie, all the time. What began a few weeks ago as the climax of another Hollywood flame-out has turned into an interesting study of how to go directly to your fans through social media. While other transgressing celebrities are quickly hidden in a shroud of carefully constructed PR moves of tearful apologies and rehab vacations, we are seeing none of that in this case. Maybe it’s partially because his publicist Stan Rosenfield quit at the beginning of last week.

However this all turns out – and I do hope it doesn’t turn out tragically – fact is, I’ve watched more of Sheen’s Korner (in all of its awkwardess) in one night than I’ve ever watched Two and a Half Men.

In coming out directly to the world through social media platforms like Twitter and UStream as his ‘crazy-ass’ self, is Charlie winning the PR battle with social media?

The News360 iPad App is Like Crack for this News Addict

News360 iPad AppAs long as I can remember I have always been a news addict. A habit that has been passed down from my father back in Nova Scotia. An early picture even shows me struggling to open a copy of Sports Illustrated. I would read the local newspapers front to back, gobble up every news magazine I could get my hands on.

These days of course, we have instant access to hundreds of thousands of news sources including web sites, blogs and news feeds. Having access to the web through mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad has now taken my news addiction to a new level.

Introducing News360

On Monday, development company News360 released News360 for the Pad. News360 is a Moscow-based company dedicated to helping readers experience personalized news. They’ve used linguistic metadata analysis and algorithms to identify trends within the feeds of news sources from around the world.

Interface design was provided by Motka Design Studio.

Over a 1000 News Sources

News360 aggregates feeds from over 1000 different news sources, including CNN, Fortune, New York Times, BBC, Guardian, Wall Street Journal and many more.

The news feeds can be sorted by Stories or Sources, as well as using GPS to locate stories near you. You can see recent tweets on the story or view the story and photos from any of the news sources that it had appeared in.

Deep Dive into background material

One of the more interesting features allows you to turn on highlighted hyperlinks. These links lead you to further background information on all the key people, companies, and subjects within the story. Once you’ve absorbed the background material you’re presented with more even more focused news stories on that keyword.

Customized Feeds

Create your own customized feed by using the My Sources/My Stories feature. Simply drag and drop icons for hundreds of sources and story subjects to the top of the screen and you’re ready to go.

I Like to Look at Pictures

If you like to look at pictures you’re in luck. Simply turn your iPad on its side and you’ll be looking at a series of scrolling news photos. Tap a photo and you see a headline, tap again and you can read the story with access to the hyperlinks as mentioned above.

Sharing is Good

Stories can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, ReadItLater (my favorite), Instaper and Email. Stories can also be saved to your iPad to be accessed later.

The site takes interface design and functionality cues from such popular news apps like Pulse News Reader, Huffington Post’s News Glide and of course Flipboard. However, the GPS feature for local news and keyword hyperlinking are features that I can really appreciate and use.

OK, enough writing I need to go get my news fix.

Social Media & the NHL Trading Deadline

NHL_trade_deadlineToday is one of those days that Canadian Hockey Fans circle on the calendar. It’s NHL Trade Deadline day and hockey fans are tuned in everywhere, by television, radio and especially by the internet and mobile.

For those who don’t know, the NHL trading deadline is when teams try to improve their roster for the upcoming playoffs, or a chance to unload those expensive players before they become free agents at the end of the year.

Reporters would spend their day working their contacts by phone and email looking for that one big trade scoop. These days however, it’s not uncommon to hear that a trade was confirmed by the player through his Twitter account. Or a fake trade announced through a player’s fake Twitter account.

Here’s a quick look at how the NHL Trade Deadline day was impressively handled through three prominent media outlets today.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Leafspace Live
The team that did the least happened had one of the best setups of all the outlets, including:

  • A live feed of LeafsTV
  • Live Boardroom feed where we saw little if anything happen
  • CoverItLive chat featuring user posts, video clips, images and polls.
  • Three columns of Twitter streams with contributions by the Hockey media, official feeds from other NHL teams and tweets featuring the #mapleleafs hashtag in the third.
  • Mentions from Facebook were also being displayed

CBC Sports Trade Deadline

  • Live feed from CBC Sports
  • Twitter integration
  • Clips from Hockey Night Radio on Sirius
  • CoverItLive chat stream featuring polls, video clips and images
  • A poll where users could evaluate each trade

TSN TradeCentre
TSN went so far to brand their presence as TradeCentre on a splash page on their site, including:

  • TradeCentre Live video feed
  • iPad and iPhone apps with special TradeCentre functionality
  • Live Blog
  • TSN Tweetbox
  • Facebook Live Chat
  • Trade Tracker

The Score featured a basic Trade Tracker with links to PuckDaddy radio and Facebook discussion.

Newspapers Toronto Star, National Post and Globe & Mail featured trade trackers as well frequently updated news and live blogs.

It’s always interesting to watch what used to be considered fringe tools now taking their place in  news gathering and reporting.