Following my blog series “Orchestras and New Media” I created a presentation (now on to an e-book). This is version 1.0 and I hope to get comments, feedback and suggestion, so that version 2.0 will be fitter, happier, more productive.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other new media tools. The trick is finding out which tools work for your organization and which tools are being used by a possible target audience. I wanted to highlight four other services not mentioned before:

SlideShare

Organizations frequently have to share and present their ideas. Microsoft PowerPoint is perhaps the most commonly used tool to convey those ideas and presentations. Annual meetings with season’s highlights, education campaigns, advocacy campaigns and fundraising events could all benefit PowerPoint’s strengths in projecting imagery and bullet points. But why would you limit your audience to those who are gathered in the room? Potential patrons, advocators and donors are everywhere.

SlideShare is an online community for sharing presentations. Upload your presentation to share your ideas and connect with others. Users can easily find presentations via a search and tags and download or embed their presentations into blogs and Web sites.

SlideShare lists things you can do:

• Embed slideshows into your own blog or website;
• Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately;
• Synch audio to your slides;
• Market your own event on SlideShare;
• Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests;
• Download the original PowerPoint / PDF file

Twitter

Launched only two years ago, Twitter is one of the most instantaneous, direct new media services around. Similar to Facebook’s and Myspace’s “status update” functions, Twitter allows the user to post short (up to 140 characters) messages for the public to see in a process called micro-blogging. Over two million users are registered at Twitter, including companies such as Whole Foods and presidential candidates such as Barack Obama.

Twitter’s uses are multiple: networking, sharing information but mostly conversation monitoring (even if you’re not ready to jump in the conversation yourself, you can monitor what is being said about your organization). Colin Carmichael, blogging at the Social Media Group, wrote:

“Track your name, your brands, your competitors, anything you need to know about before it hits the ‘rest of the web.’ Twitter is a breeding ground for blog posts and bloggers have gotten into the habit of using Twitter to collaborate and research their upcoming posts out in the open. If you or your brand get a lot of blogosphere play, it’s the online equivalent of having inside access to the editorial boards of every major newspaper.”

The Point

Online fundraising is a completely different sector of the Internet and new media. A whole new series could be written about the opportunities, case studies and tools; Barack Obama alone can tell you how important it can be for an organization. Obama not only raises funds but engages and activates his online community. Now, most organizations do not have the manpower or the funds to set up a complete social media network like Obama’s, but there are ample opportunities to raise funds and activism. One such service is The Point.

Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” The Point lets its users start campaigns—asking for donations or make something happen—but the operation only succeeds if the campaign hits a predetermined tipping point. For example, if we raise $5,000 we will start an education program in a community center, or, in one wacky case, if we raise $10 billion, we’ll build a glass dome over Chicago to keep the winter out.

In its own words: “Every problem has a tipping point of public frustration that will force a solution. If enough people want a problem to be solved and they have a way to find one another and coordinate action, they will solve it” and “The Point offers a new approach to leveraging the influence of groups and making things happen.”

Yelp

Online city guides have been around since the early beginnings of the Internet, but now they combine yellow pages, city guides and social networks with user-generated content. Yelp is perhaps the best-known example.

Users can find, review and talk about places, restaurants, doctors and anything local. Businesses can claim their page. According to the Web site “Once you have claimed your business page you’ll be able to access numerous features (track how many people view your business on Yelp, private customer messaging, immediately update your business’ facts).” Advertising and sponsorships are also possible.

Yelp has come up with a list of dos and don’ts for businesses and organizations:

1. DON’T review your own business or solicit reviews from your employees or friends.
2. DON’T spam yelpers with promotional messages about your business.
3. DON’T overestimate the impact of a single negative review. It happens to even the best businesses. That said, if you see a trend of negative reviews, you may want to take this feedback and determine if there is a way to improve your business.
4. DON’T lash out at the people who have written negative reviews about you. Tempting as that may be, we see that backfiring in some cases as the Yelp community may up the ante and even engage in “vigilante justice” by spreading more negativity. Try to remember, “the customer is always right”.
5. DON’T offer incentives or payment for your customers to write positive reviews about your business on Yelp. This sort of “shilling” often causes ill will with both current and potential customers. In addition, these paid reviews violate Yelp’s Review Guidelines and will be removed.

1. DO claim your business page and afterwards, login to Yelp for Business Owners to keep track of your business’ page on Yelp and to engage with the Yelp community.
2. DO add photos to your business page and make sure your business information is correct. You’ll be able to immediately update your business’ information via the Yelp for Business Owners website.
3. DO thank those customers who have reviewed your business using Yelp for Business Owners. In general your best bet is to keep it simple and positive, keeping in mind that these are your most vocal customers.
4. DO take the feedback to heart but remember that each review is just one single opinion.
5. DO start thinking about every customer as a potential yelper and supporter… and providing the excellent customer service that will encourage them to spread the word.

Remember the MTV/Nickelodeon study? According to the study, “a clear majority of young people asked said the majority of website links (88%) they viewed and the viral video content they downloaded (55%) came from friends’ recommendations.”

Tagging is the core social element of many Web 2.0 services. The buzzword for this phenomenon is “folksonomy,” which translates to “user generated classification.” Participation is very easy and tagging data is used in new ways to find information.

Organizations can create special tags to keep track of conversations and give an opportunity to content creators to effectively pull the organization’s sleeve and bring attention to their content. Some previously mentioned services that use tagging are Technorati, where you can search blog posts or even entire blogs carrying specific tags, and Last.fm, where you can tag artists, albums and tracks.

Beth Kanter created a special “wearemedia” tag for bloggers who write about the We Are Media project. When bloggers write an article about the project, they add the tag to their post, alerting search engines such as Technorati. This is an easy way for Beth to keep track of who is joining the conversation on her project, by simply searching by “wearemedia”; and it’s an easy way for the bloggers to call attention to their post and stimulate responses and conversation.

The Web site Chicagoist uses a special “chicagoist” tag in Flickr, an image hosting service, so that their readers can mark photos that might be interesting for Chicagoist’s blog posts. Photos tagged range from Lincoln’s deathbed to a photo of a bachelorette party on the streets of Chicago. Chicagoist editors frequently pick out a photo to feature on their Web site (with the appropriate credit to the photographer, of course) to go along an article or even be featured by itself.

Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, is a service where users store, organize, search and manage bookmarks of Web pages. Each bookmark is accompanied by a tag or several tags, allowing other users to find links to similar articles or pages. The San Francisco Symphony hosted its first “Bloggers Night” in 2007. The orchestra invited area bloggers to cover a concert and bookmarked all the resulting blog posts on a special del.icio.us page with a special tag “sanfranciscosymphonybloggernight.”

A slightly different take on social bookmarking are services such as Digg and StumbleUpon. These Web sites work slightly differently, focusing on a social recommendation system rather than purely bookmarking. Users can submit links and those links are voted upon (“digging” or “burying,” e.g. up or down vote). The links and stories with the most up votes are featured on the home page of the service.

YouTube, perhaps the most famous content community, gives the following advice to non-profits: “Tag and Title Well. Tag and title your videos with relevant keywords—that’s how users will find your content as they navigate YouTube.”

But tagging is not the only Web 2.0 characteristic of these content communities. Flickr, for example, invites comments and discussions about its images and organizations and users can annotate their images. In addition, users can subscribe to an RSS feed so they can keep track of new images being added.

Digital Storytelling

What’s perhaps most intriguing about content communities is the opportunity to tell a digital story. Why not tell the story of your orchestra’s education outreach campaign, Schoenberg or any other composer festival, or touring adventures in Europe?

Many orchestras already keep a photo journal of their touring activities on their Web site. Let’s take this to the next level and post it on Flick; annotate the images, invite comments and tag locations, people and anything else you can imagine.

Again, YouTube offers good advice:

• Reach Out. Post videos that get YouTube viewers talking, and then stay in the conversation with comments and video responses;
• Partner Up. Find other organizations on YouTube who complement your mission, and work together to promote each other;
• Keep It Fresh. Put up new videos regularly and keep them short—ideally under 5 minutes;
• Spread Your Message. Share links and the embed code for your videos with supporters so they can help get the word out;
• Be Genuine. We have a wide demographic, so high view counts come from content that’s compelling, rather than what’s “hip.”

And lastly, give others the opportunity to tell your organization’s story. Create those tags so that people can let you know when they talk about you. Add those “add to del.icio.us; add to dig; add to Facebook” buttons to your Web site’s content. But most of all, give people the media to tell it. As said before in this series: if you provide content, make utilization and attribution easy. Provide sound samples, interviews, videos and images under a Creative Commons license, which covers the spectrum between full copyright and the public domain.

Second Life is the best known and largest of the Internet-based virtual worlds. Users, or Residents as they are called, download software, which allows them to interact with each other through avatars, virtual representations of themselves. Residents can explore the world, through walking and flying, chat and meet with other Residents, participate in activities and create and trade items and services for an in-world currency. In short, a complete virtual reality world.

Real-world companies and organizations have set up offices in Second Life. Residents can drive around in a Nissan on the company’s own island; or they can buy Adidas sneakers and other gear from the official store.

There are numerous examples of non-profit and cause marketing: in 2007, a flood covered virtual replicas of cities like London, Tokyo and Amsterdam “as part of a campaign to illustrate the potential environmental and financial impacts of climate change.”

One of the most impressive cultural examples is the Old Masters Picture Gallery of the Dresden State Art Collections. A detailed and complete replica occupies a large stretch of virtual land. Residents can browse high resolution images of some of the most famous Old Master paintings in a museum environment.

Classical music has not stayed behind. In September 2007, the Liverpool Philharmonic organized one of the first Second Life orchestral concerts. Widely reported in newspapers such as The Telegraph, The Guardian and the New York Times, the concert was, if anything, mostly a public relations success:

“From a PR standpoint, the virtual concert idea was an unprecedented triumph – can you remember another time when an otherwise routine concert announcement made the news pages of the all the main UK dailies?”

According to an article in the New York Times, covering the event, this wasn’t the only classical music endeavor into Second Life: Universal Classics had built an online island with an exhibition about mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran, promoting Cecilia Bartoli’s Malibran-themed album; pianist Lang Lang had given a concert in avatar-form; and the Sinfonia Leeds and Red {an orchestra} had given concerts.

Guy Dammann of The Guardian continued in his article:

“It was the much-vaunted community feel of Second Life, whereby an event is marked more by its fostering of a kind of virtual being-together than by the actual quality of what is currently on offer, that was in many respects the main victor on the night.”

There usually isn’t much discussion among total strangers after a real-life concert, unless it is maybe gently forced upon patrons by a post concert activity. In Second Life, however, spontaneous discussion erupted immediately after the concert.

Opportunities galore, but there are some serious obstacles and limitations. Concert halls can only serve a limited, albeit world-wide, audience of 50 to 100 Residents due to technical limitations. One solution is to broadcast on multiple screens throughout the Second Life world, spreading the coverage. But the more apparent obstacles are budgeting and musician contracts: Liverpool paid $6,000 for its real estate in Second Life and another $10,000 on production costs. Musicians’ media contracts would likely need to be updated to accommodate live broadcasts through Second Life.

Like other Internet services, music Web sites have moved toward Web 2.0 and social media. Customization, sharing and social networking are at the heart of online music services such as Last.fm, Pandora and iLike.

Pandora and Last.fm let users create a profile, similar to the social networks at Myspace and Facebook, and enable users to find friends and join groups of people that share their musical taste. Users create custom radio stations and playlists that play their preferences, which are indicated by rating, disapproving or approving songs and artists. The service recommends other songs and artists based on their preferences as well, making musical discovery a big part of the experience.

iLike, another online music service, has grown mainly through integration with social network services such as Facebook, hi5 and Bebo and programs such as iTunes and Windows Media Player. iLike helps people share music recommendations, playlists, and personalized concert alerts. Last.fm and Pandora also seek integration with social networks; both services have created Facebook applications, which show the radio players in Facebook users’ profiles.

Last.fm, Pandora and iLike list tour and concert information, including links to Ticketmaster or other sales points, for the artist currently playing in your browser-based player. All three services also offer users the ability to purchase the song they are listening to through Amazon.com and iTunes.

In March 2008, R.E.M. became the first band to launch a new album in iLike. The band’s album streamed (note: not downloadable) for a few days in its entirety exclusively, and most importantly free, on iLike, nearly a week before the album’s North American release.

Orchestras can benefit most by providing these social music services with the most up-to-date information: concert and tour information, cover art, latest releases etc. But why not set up a similar promotion to R.E.M.’s foray into social music for your orchestra’s next release? R.E.M., being the first and being a major band with highly anticipated recordings, received much coverage, in both print and online media. I’d be willing to bet classical music critics around the country would pay attention to the first orchestra to do a similar promotion.

On a last, brief note, music on the Internet and its impact on copyright is a very current topic of discussion among webcast radio services, artists and labels. Currently in the United States, many webcast radio services are fighting a May 2007 rate increase in the royalties payable to performers of recorded works broadcast on the Internet, as approved by the Copyright Royalty Board. Whatever happens with this discussion in the future might duly impact the abovementioned services.

Wikis, Web sites that allow users to contribute to or edit its content, are fully embracing the Web 2.0 approach, operating on the philosophy that the more users participate, the better the content. The collective intelligence empowers the community. The best known wiki is Wikipedia, which takes the number seven spot in traffic ranking on both the global as well as the United States list at Alexa.

Although wiki pages can make no guarantee of validity due to its open process (and vandalism frequently occurs), a large community polices, edits and cleans the pages at a remarkable rate. Employees of orchestras should tread carefully in the world of wikis and Wikipedia. After several scandals involving corporations and politicians favorably editing their own encyclopedic entry and even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales messing with his entry, community members and users are very weary of edits by employees or affiliates.

Most orchestras will have a dedicated page on Wikipedia. (I started the NHK Symphony page after I was looking for information and discovered they did not have a page). But what to do if you see an apparent error on your orchestra’s page? Spelling and grammar mistakes, vandalism and spam or incorrect dates, titles or names can be fixed by employees or affiliates, but never anonymously! Transparency is key. Keep in mind that your IP number will be logged and it is easy to trace it back to your company (one such tool is WikiScanner). Simply create an account, work in full transparency and provide sources where needed.

But be careful. Do not try to insert favorable messaging; a neutral point of view is highly treasured in the community. If you see something you would like to portray in a different light, use the discussion page to put forth your argument and provide independent sources (for example a link to a newspaper article) that support your point. Read Wikipedia’s Conflict of Interest page for more information.

As one member points out, you can help even more by offering your promotional materials, including publicity photos and press releases, with a free license, without copyright. I’ve mentioned Creative Commons before; consider providing sound samples, interviews, videos and images under a Creative Commons license, which covers the spectrum between full copyright and the public domain.

Wikipedia is the best known example, but there are hundreds, if not thousands of other wikis. There might be a niche market for classical music. Sequenza21, a contemporary music Web site, has its own wiki with performer and composer bios and multimedia sources. This wiki has new entries, but also complements existing Wikipedia entries. Another, somewhat different, example of a wiki is the We Are Media wiki by Beth Kanter. This wiki provides a collaborative look at social media and non-profits.

Just like blogs, one option orchestras can consider is using a wiki internally. Wikis are great for collaborative projects and can be as private as needed. Think of an archives project on the organization’s intranet with the orchestra’s history, complete with photos and audio, as an informational reference. Similar to internal blogs, internal wikis might encourage employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence and direct communication between various layers of an organization.

Last post, we looked at the key elements for blogging and how organizations can connect with blogs and their authors. In this post, we look at how organizations can blog and why, or if, they should.

The first question you have to ask yourself is “why should our organization have a blog?” Keeping up with the Joneses is not the right answer; there should be a strategic objective for starting a blog. If you’re not sure why and you can’t figure out a purpose or objective, perhaps you shouldn’t be starting a blog.

A Northeastern University and Backbone Media study revealed 5 factors that should be taken into consideration before making a decision to blog:

• Culture (does your organization have particular cultural traits worth revealing? Or conversely, does your organization have a bad reputation that needs improvement?);
• Transparency (transparency is crucial to establishing credibility and trust with an audience.  While you do not have to install a live Web cam feed from your President’s Office—it is okay to set boundaries—people want to see an honest picture of a company);
• Time (it takes a lot of time to set up, research and write a quality blog and engage the blogging community effectively);
• Dialogue (a company’s ability and willingness to engage in a greater dialogue with the blogging community is an important determinant in the success of their blog);
• Entertaining Writing Style and Personalization (the writing style and how much a blogger is prepared to reveal about their life, experience and opinions in a blog post bring a human side to a blog).

If you are purely thinking about another way to get your marketing message out, another outlet to sell tickets, you shouldn’t blog. Sure, blogging can get the message out or boost ticket sales, but it is not a quick fix and if you start out with marketing or promotions as a focus, you will never gain much traction or an audience.

Think about it: do your patrons really want to hear about the XYZ Orchestra performing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony? No. They already get that information through too many other channels. But do your patrons want to hear what your president has to say about the supposed decline of classical music, or the inner workings of an orchestra administration, or maybe even the anecdote on how Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was surprisingly scheduled this season? Perhaps. It depends what you write and what kind of information you are willing to give. The most important thing to keep in mind is to add value. Valuable industry news and conversations with notable colleagues from around the industry are just two directions to take.

If you do decide to blog, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Author (who will write the blog; interesting, authoritative voice);
• Audience (remember who you are writing for);
• Topics (think about what your audience wants to read);
• Comments (what is your policy on comments; what is allowed and what is not).

Nina Simon, who writes at the Museum 2.0 blog, lists 4 approaches to Institutional Blogging. She writes: “you have to decide WHY your institution is starting a blog (and no, “all my friends are doing it” is not enough) and then find the approach that works for you.”

• Institutional Info Blog (blogs that distribute news about the organization; maximized by adding a personal touch);
• Community Content Blog (blogs that take the content and offerings of the organization and try to open it up to community input);
• Specialized Content Blog (blogs that are typically linked to an exhibition or sub-specialty of the museum, presenting news about that content);
• Personal Voice Blog (blogs in which individuals or a small panel of staff offer personal commentary about their organization).

In the world of classical music, a good example of a Personal Voice Blog is Brian Dickie’s “Life as General Director of Chicago Opera Theater.” This very casual, personal journal highlights the day-to-day activities and travels of Dickie.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Institutional Info Blog of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Written mostly by Philipp Brieler, who is a managing editor in the editorial & media content department, the blog follows current productions and shares background information with a personal touch, often in the style of a magazine article. Sometimes, guest bloggers are invited to write, such as mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer.

The Chicago Classical Music blog can be classified as a Community Content Blog. The main blog entries are written by staff members of participating organizations, but there are also opportunities for patrons and the public to offer their view and take on the scene.

These three examples are by no means the golden standard for each approach. They each have their own merits and faults. Repeating the abovementioned advice: remember your audience. Rising or dwindling readership or participation is just one indicator of whether you are taking the right approach for your organization.

A quick note about one option we haven’t discussed yet: the internal blog. Generally accessed through the organization’s intranet, an internal blog can serve several purposes and may encourage employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence and direct communication between various layers of an organization.