As I personally thought that The Voice was quite innovative already, I was totally surprised when I heard about Rising Star. Not only was I interested because people are really judged on their singing qualities, it includes some technological innovations as well.

Instead of listening to all the judges and their opinions, Rising Stars enables you to be a judge a yourself! With the Rising Starr app you can easily swipe people to the next round. The swiping aspect of the app reminds me to the Tinder app. In fact you are now doing the same with the performers on Rising Star. If you swipe to the right you’ll vote for the contestant to go the next round. Pretty awesome, right?

Another new aspect is that if the performer gets enough votes, an enormous wall will ‘rise’. But not just a wall. It is an huge video screen that shows both the performer and the viewers at home. The application is linked to your Facebook and Twitter account, so you will see your Facebook or Twitter profile picture on that wall.  How cool would it be if you see yourself on national television?

I think that the programme would be a real success in The Netherlands. And I’m not the only one who thinks that, as Joop van den Ende has bought the rights for Rising Star. I think it especially can become a huge success if the app lets you share your judgements on social networks. Nothing takes more up to the trend ‘real-time’ than social media. On one hand, If viewers don’t want to install the Rising Star application, I think they have to make it possible to vote through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For example using the hashtag RisingStar and then the name of the contestant.  And on the other hand, you can make the app more attractive by adding exclusive content of the show.

The only fault of the American version of Rising Star is that there was not a possibility to vote by texting or calling. There are people that don’t want to give their personal information to commercial companies, they believe it is an invasion on their privacy. When Joop van den Ende is going to launch the Dutch version of Rising Star, voting through texting and calling needs to be possible.

References

http://abc.go.com/shows/rising-star

http://www.endemol.nl/Nieuws/Paginas/Endemol-Nederland-verwerft-rechten-van-tv-sensatie-%E2%80%98Rising-Star%E2%80%99.aspx

In this blog I’d like to talk about a crowdsourcing and co-creation campaign from Coca-Cola. In cooperation with Maroon 5 they organised a 24-hour during live stream. In this period people from all over the world could contribute to create an original track. The song had to be written, recorded and produced within 24 hours. When fans visited the website of this campaign, they were able to see the studio from different angles. They could communicate with the band through different social media networks. Fans were able to comment and suggest ideas for the lyrics and rhythms for this new track. This input was projected on a large screen in the studio. If the song would be downloaded by fans all around the globe over 100.000 times, Coca-Cola would donate the amount of money they have earned to a charity called the RAIN Foundation.

Despite the fact that  the idea was original, the campaign itself didn’t create quite a lot buzz. The (after)movie of the campaign was only viewed 15.000 times on YouTube. At the time Coca-Cola was promoting the campaign on their social media accounts. They had about 23 million followers on Facebook, but no more than 6.000 subscribed for this particular event. What went wrong?

Personally, I think this concept was one of a kind. A song was created in a whole new way. Coca-Cola had the courage to experiment with new ways to create music. This kind of innovation is exactly what the music industry needs because I think that the music industry has lost its creativity. Everything is about the money, it should be about creating art.

As I was very curious to learn about this (failed) event, I have scoured the internet to find some answers. Several answers were given. Some claimed that the engagement was low because Maroon 5 was the participating band in this campaign. Others claimed that the content marketing campaign was not executed properly. There was not enough content about this event available.

However, most people claimed that the event failed because of the fact that they had to subscribe with their Facebook account as they didn’t want to share their personal information with Coca-Cola. I think I wouldn’t have participated as well when I had to subscribe with my Facebook account because I neither want to share my personal information with Coca-Cola.

All in all, I think that it was an unique and original concept of Coca-Cola. However, I think it could have become a bigger success if they let people choose whether or not they would subscribe with their Facebook account. Besides, it would have been wise if they had done some research to decide which artists would generate enough buzz for the campaign. Who topped the Billboard chart at that particular moment?

References

http://www.coca-cola.com/music/en_US/24hrsession/html/Coke24hrs_PostEvent.html

The ultimate dream of a marketer: a high ranking in the organic search results in Google without paying for it. It is the ultimate dream, as a high ranking in the Google search results is directly linked with more interaction and blogging can make that happen for you! There are many other advantages besides a higher ranking in the organic search results.

The first one is that you can provide your target group with a lot of information. Instead of only trying to sell your products to (potential) customers, you can also provide information about the products itself. As you provide additional and unique information about the specifics products, potential customers will most likely be interested in following your blog. They don’t have the feeling you are trying to palm them with your products.

Secondly, it makes your brand and webshop more reliable. By sharing your thoughts and opinions of new developments within your branch you can profile yourself as a specialist or a thought leader.

As mentioned before, blogging is not only useful to create more engagement, but if you blog on a regularly base Google will see that there is a lot of user generated content, which will make your webshop more relevant. I often see people on Facebook sharing blogs to 300/400 friends at a time. With social shares you are not only showing Google that your site is relevant, but you are also increasing brand awareness.

Despite these advantages, there are a couple of things that you have to take into account before you start blogging. The first one is the amount of time that you’ll need. Writing interesting and relevant blogs is not something you do in 10 minutes as you can easily spend a couple of hours on writing it. You also  have to realise that your blog is directly linked to the brand its image. Posting your opinion on specific (sensitive) subjects could harm your brand reputation.

All in all, I really think that blogging is one of the most important things for having a high ranking in the search results. It is especially worthy if others are linking to your blog or if your blog is posted on an external and relevant blog. In this way Google will think your site is relevant and this will increase you page authority and a higher ranking, of course.

References

SEO for Idiots: The 10 Basics of Blogging Search Engine Optimization

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-include-influencers-in-your-content-strategy

The subject of this week is Social Influence and Diffusion. As we know from the course, the power of social influence and viral marketing is huge. When I was reading the case of this week I was actually quite surprised. I really thought that Cork’d had a really good idea. And I still think they had. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out well for them.

From my point of view, this is because of their business model. The biggest competitor of Cork’d was Snooth.com. The biggest difference between Cork’d and Snooth.com was that Snooth.com allowed ads on their website and that they let their users shop on their side. On the contrary, Cork’d didn’t allow ads on their site and asked advertisers an annual fee of $999,-. Why would an advertiser pay $999,- if they can’t see how much they benefit from it? Why would they pay an annual fee of $999,- for a whole new website? I would have preferred to advertise on Snooth.com as well.

The most interesting article for me was Leveraging public sentiment to beat the market. I think it is quite interesting and scary to see how you can influence the stock market with one single tweet.

All in all it became clear that the power of social influence and viral marketing is huge and that is exactly why platforms such as Cork’d and Snooth.com can be very successful as they let their users share their profile on Facebook and Twitter. In this way more brand awareness will be created and more potential customers are reached. It’s not about if you use viral marketing, it is about how you use viral marketing.