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Remember Dave Carroll, the musician whose prize Taylor guitar was broken by United Airlines' baggage handlers?
United refused to compensate him for the $1200 worth of damage sustained by the guitar so Carroll promised United he would write three songs about the experience. To date, his first You Tube video has garnered nearly 5 million views.
And now he's back with the second song in the trilogy: United Breaks Guitars Song 2. See below:
Razorfish, one of the world's largest digital marketing companies, has published “Fluent,” a report that examines the rise of Social Influence Marketing (SIM) - the method of employing social media and social influencers to meet a company's business and marketing objectives.
The report features a proprietary survey that they use to demonstrate how social media informs consumer purchase behavior, and introduces the SIM Score - a new benchmark they developed to measure a brand's social influence and favorability relative to its competitors.
The report also contains a collection of essays on topics such as using Twitter to build a better brand.
If you’re interested in learning how to apply social media marketing to your brand it’s well worth a read. Via MediaPost.com
Dave Carroll has posted a brief video on YouTube to thank supporters and to announce that United Airlines “generously, but late, offered some compensation.” Carroll is the musician who produced “United Breaks Guitars,” a song and video about his fruitless quest to obtain compensation for damage done to his guitar by United Airlines baggage handlers. To date, the YouTube video has received more than 1.5 million views.
Carroll says he’s grateful for United’s offer, but suggested the airline donate the money to charity.
So musician Dave Carroll is sitting on a United Airlines flight waiting for takeoff and a passenger behind him cries out, “My God, they’re throwing guitars out there.” Sure enough, at the plane's destination, Carroll’s $3500 Taylor guitar is DOA.
After nine months of buck passing United Airlines finally refused to pay the $1200 repair bill and Caroll promised to write three songs and post them to YouTube to memorialize his experience with United. Dave Carroll is a man of his word - video of the first song is below.
iGO iWRITE, an application that enables the community of online travel aficionados to publish travel books created as a group, has been launched on Facebook. Users "can help edit, vote, and shape the direction of the final user-generated book." Topics of posted stories include worldwide destinations, hidden beaches, quirky small towns, hostels, ecotourism, and voluntourism. The end product, a blend of new and traditional media, will be a user-generated series of travel books available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Compleo 1/9/09
According to Brandweek, RadioShack is partnering with Facebook to launch MyMosaic which s turning to social networks to raise brand awareness among younger consumers. The application forms a ‘mosaic’ from the Facebook pictures of the user’s friends. The intention is to raise brand awareness and connect with a younger user base.
As if marketers don't have enough to worry about, they can now add online reputation management to the list.
Reputation management is nothing new. But reputation management challenges are amplified on the Internet where anyone with a keyboard can share their opinions on blogs, forums, social media and other user-driven content sites. Sooner or later they may have something uncomplimentary to say about your company.
So, in a digital world where consumers, not brands, are in control, and search engine results can dredge up anything good or bad, that’s ever been said about your brand, what’s a marketer to do?
First, realize that you cannot police the net. With alarming regularity companies who don’t realize this will send a blogger a cease and desist letter demanding they remove a post the company doesn’t like. This never works the way the company expects because letters from attorneys are like trophies to bloggers and they will proudly publish it on their blog next to the offending post. The letter and the post then spread virally to people who wouldn’t have heard about the incident otherwise, and now ‘bully’ is added to the negative characterizations in the original post.
Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts, Yahoo Pipes (which lets you aggregate and search feeds) and Boardtracker.com (a forum search engine that enables users to search & track threads on forums and boards) are just a few of the free tools you can use to monitor what's being said about your brand online. Don’t be afraid to respond to negative comments but focus on addressing the problem, without attacking or trying to muzzle the messenger.
Collective Intellect is a research company that provides tracking, filtering and ranking media research for the Fortune 500. The company uses a combination of algorithms and humans to identify emerging New Media and traditional media content across blogs, discussion boards and social networking websites. The company says their approach produces more comprehensive, timely and relevant results than traditional web search tools. Customers use Collective Intellect technology to:
track information related to stocks and investing
support public relations and investor relations activities
facilitate customer support outreach programs
create product management market research feedback programs
develop interactive forums where customer relationships can be nurtured
ExitReality is a new social media platform that aims to improve your online experience with an enhanced 3D, multi-user, immersive messaging environment.
Features include the ability to create:
Photo albums that become virtual galleries where you can walk through, admire and even comment on the photos that decorate the wall.
Video clips that transform into 3D flat-screen TVs that you can enjoy watching with friends... hey, even fight over the remote.
Immersive Messaging where you are able to see and interact with all your friends while chatting with them at millions of locations online.
ExitReality works with leading global social media sites Facebook, MySpace, Fraudster, Hi5, Rout and Bebop and is currently taking beta applications. They plan to launch “soon.”
Blurb is a company that provides software to help you create your own hard cover book, including a full cover custom dust cover.
According to the website, you simply download “Blurb BookSmart”, their free bookmaking software. Add photos, artwork and text. Then order as many books as you like.
For an impressive gift to a special customer, bundle up your white papers in a book.
You pay only when you publish; prices start at $12.95 per book.
iGO iWRITE, an application that enables the community of online travel aficionados to publish travel books created as a group, has been launched on Facebook. Users "can help edit, vote, and shape the direction of the final user-generated book." Topics of posted stories include worldwide destinations, hidden beaches, quirky small towns, hostels, ecotourism, and voluntourism. The end product, a blend of new and traditional media, will be a user-generated series of travel books available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 
As if marketers don't have enough to worry about, they can now add online reputation management to the list.
lurb
