How Musicians Use Social Media to Inspire Activism [VIDEO]

A panel of musicians, marketing executives and media professionals joined the UN Foundation’s Executive Director of Global Partnerships Elizabeth Gore to explore how musicians and other celebrities can use social media to drive support for social issues. The panel, which included musicians Lupe Fiasco and Kenna Zemedkun, VP of Sustainability Marketing at ignition Simon Isaacs, Founder of Lovesocial Azita Ardakani, and Rolling Stone contributing writer Laura Checkoway, discussed previous challenges and successes involved in creating awareness for social causes and talked about how href="http://mashable.com/2010/01/04/social-media-tools-bands/">new forms of media — including Twitter — are enabling celebrities to href="http://mashable.com/2010/03/12/musicians-social-media/">rally their fan bases directly. You can watch the full discussion from Mashable’s and 92Y’s href="http://mashable.com/un-week/digital-media-lounge/agenda/">UN Week Digital Media Lounge above.

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5 Easy Ways to Support a Cause Through Your Social Network

Collecting money for posting advertisements on your Twitter feed, Facebook wall, and other social media profiles might not be the best way to win friends (or followers) and influence people.

But your network is likely to be more forgiving, and even encouraging, if you are promoting a good cause.

The following five websites can help you collaborate with brands to support your favorite charities by endorsing their products on your social network.

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1. Endorse for a Cause

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This website can turn your online shopping habit into a fundraiser for the cause of your choice. When you visit one of Endorse for a Cause’s online retailer partners, you can send a tweet or Facebook update with an endorsement of brands or products that you like. You decide exactly what to say in the message, though starter tweets that begin with phrases like “I’m a fan of…”, “Shopping for…”, and “Help me help…” are provided.

When your friends click on your endorsements and make purchases, Endorse for a Cause receives a portion of the money and allocates about 70% to your cause. You can track how much money you’ve raised on Endorse for a Cause’s personal home page and earn badges for participation. Right now there are only about 10 cause choices, and they are primarily large charities like the American Cancer Society and the Humane Society. You can, however, vote to add a cause if yours isn’t yet included.

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2. Rec.fm

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Create a “Rec” for a product you love by telling Rec.fm exactly what you like about it. The site will generate a short URL that you can share on your Facebook or Twitter profile. When your friends click on it, they’ll be taken to a Rec.fm site with more details on the product. If they choose to buy the product, Rec.fm receives a payment from the retailer and more than half of it is passed on to the charity of your choice. You can also add a tab to your Facebook profile that shows your friends all of your “Recs” in one place.

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3. SixDegrees.org

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The idea behind the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is that everyone in the world, including the prolific actor, is connected by no more than six steps of acquaintance. Although not initially pleased with the name of this game, Kevin Bacon decided to put its philosophy to use for good causes by starting SixDegrees.org.

The website partners with Network for Good to offer individuals the opportunity to create charity endorsement widgets called “fundraising badges.” These badges can be placed on their social networking profiles, blogs and websites. People who visit their sites can donate to the endorsed charity via the widget.

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4. adCause

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The platform adCause gives you a little more control over the money you can make from Twitter. While structured as a network where publishers (tweeters) and advertisers can sync up and seal an advertising deal, you can decide what percentage of your profits should go to charity and what percentage you want to keep. You can also split your profits between different charities.

Unlike other sites, however, advertisers need to select you based on the tweets you create. These “adspot” profiles include a short description of what you usually tweet about, how long you would be willing to advertise a product, how often you would tweet about a product, and how much you would charge for this service (the site suggests about one penny per follower).

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5. SocialVibe

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SocialVibe donates money to your selected charity based on participation in branded activities like surveys. A Facebook app encourages your friends to help by completing the same activity. Your friends earn points, and therefore donations for your charity by completing the activities that you post.

You can also integrate a widget into your WordPress or Blogger site.

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More Social Good Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Social Good
- 10 Ways to Start a Fund for Social Good Online
- Why Social Media Is a Game-Changer for Causes
- How Social Good Has Revolutionized Philanthropy
- 5 iPhone Apps to Help Fight Poverty

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Sveta

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What’s up with the Twitter prank?

 

17-year-old Australian Boy, Japanese Developer Take Blame for Twitter Meltdown

A 17-year-old boy from Australia claims he inadvertently triggered a chain of events that led to thousands of people being affected by a Twitter security flaw yesterday. But it all may have been started by a Japanese developer a couple of hours earlier.

Pearce Delphin, or @zzap on Twitter, says he exposed the security flaw by tweeting a piece of code with an onMouseOver JavaScript function, which caused a pop-up to appear when a user merely moves his mouse cursor over the message.

Very soon, the code was modified to do other sorts of things – perform auto retweets, open pornographic websites and generally create havoc on Twitter, which lasted a couple of hours until Twitter admins patched the vulnerability.

“I did it merely to see if it could be done … that JavaScript really could be executed within a tweet. At the time of posting the tweet, I had no idea it was going to take off how it did. I just hadn’t even considered it,” Delphin told AFP via e-mail.

“I discovered a vulnerability, I didn’t create a self-replicating worm. As far as I know, that isn’t technically illegal,” Delphin said. He hopes he won’t get into trouble, but he very well could — the proper course of action in situations like these is reporting such a vulnerability to Twitter. Exposing a security flaw like he did, even inadvertently, is at the very least an error in judgment.

However, in this case, the flaw was so elementary and spread so fast that it’s hard to point at Delphin and consider him solely responsible for the damage it caused (which, according to Twitter, was not very big, despite the fact that the flaw was potentially extremely dangerous). Delphin, together with several others (for example, Scandinavian developer Magnus Holm) claims he merely modified the idea from another user who had used the code to make his tweets colored, meaning he was not the first to expose the flaw.

The “other user” was probably a Japanese developer. Masato Kinugawa said he reported the XSS vulnerability to Twitter on August 14, which was subsequently patched, but he later discovered that the vulnerability was exploitable again. He then created a Twitter account called RainbowTwtr, which he used to prove that the flaw could be used to create colored tweets.

This is in line with Twitter’s account of the incident. From Twitter’s official blog: “We discovered and patched this issue last month. However, a recent site update (unrelated to new Twitter) unknowingly resurfaced it.”

One thing about the entire incident causes concern: the vulnerability was too easy to exploit, and it spread amazingly fast. Twitter should take a good look at its security before an attack similar to this one causes a lot more damage.

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How to Use Facebook and Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Retail Shop

I’m always surprised at how few retail spaces take advantage of Twitter and Facebook (yes, there are exceptions). The costs are low, the risks are manageable and your customers are already using the platforms.

By engaging customers “where they live,” you can increase the foot traffic to your shop and grow your business.

Here are 5 steps to grow your retail business using Facebook and Twitter.

#1: Set Up Shop

“80 percent of success is just showing up.” – Woody Allen

This may sound obvious, but if you want to engage your customers and prospects on Twitter and Facebook, you have to be there.

On Twitter, this means creating an account for your business, but it also may mean creating an account for you or other people in your company. With few exceptions, people are more likely to follow a person rather than a business, and much more likely to engage with a person rather than a logo. By creating an account for both you and your business, you increase your chances for engaging your audience.

On Facebook, setting up shop means creating a business page and claiming your Facebook Place (more on that later). You should also have a Facebook profile for yourself that is linked to your page. Even if you’re a wallflower, this is good advice. Facebook provides more tools and functionality for pages that are linked to profiles.

#2: Build Your Audience

The first step to getting someone to visit your brick-and-mortar store may be to get them to visit your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.

Once you have your Twitter account and Facebook page set up, you should spend some time finding and building your audience on these platforms. Since many retail shops are “geographically challenged”—you can only do business with people within driving distance—finding local people is an essential first step.

For Twitter, I recommend visiting the advanced search. You can immediately limit your search to tweets within a geographic area, and refine it further by searching for specific terms. A chiropractor might search for “pain” within 15 miles of Austin, TX, a florist might search for “anniversary” within 5 miles of Scarborough, ME, and a restaurant might search for anyone within 10 miles of Huntington, NY, as everyone I know needs to eat to survive.

An advanced search will bring up all the recent tweets that meet your criteria with the handle and avatar of the person who tweeted. From the results page you can follow these people or click on their profile for more information. Since following a person creates a knee-jerk reaction for them to follow you back, a certain percentage of these people will become your followers.

On Facebook, businesses don’t “fan” people, but you can still find your audience. Using targeted Facebook ads, leveraging your personal profile and creating a compelling landing page are all ways to build your fan base on Facebook. Mari Smith lists 21 Creative Ways to Increase Your Facebook Fanbase and Ching Ya lists more at 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following.

#3: Create Content That Engages Your Audience

Just getting people to fan or follow you won’t bring them into your shop, however. You’ll need to create a steady stream of content to engage them. Whatever your business, you can create content that is compelling and relevant to your audience.

Own a restaurant? Post your lunch special to Facebook and Twitter, complete with a photo. As your fan base grows, you can ask them for suggestions on what they’d like to see as the daily special. Or run a contest on what to name your new sandwich where all the entries must be posted to your business page (which requires them to first fan your page).

Run an art supply store? Poll your audience on their favorite medium and why. Watercolors? Oil paint? Sculpture? (It’s amazing how much a simple question can energize a community.)

Are you the curator at the aquarium? Post a photo of a different fish every day with information about the fish and links back to your website where visitors can learn more and buy a day pass.

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie

You can take engagement to the next level by talking to or about a loyal customer.

On Twitter, it’s as simple as using their handle in a tweet. Maybe one of your most loyal customers participated in Tri for a Cure; if so, give her props. Or maybe you see that another customer is trying to sell his old truck on Twitter so you retweet his message. Little gestures go a long way.

On Facebook, you can tag someone in an update. Since Facebook has a broader audience base, it’s probable that your update will be seen by more people (friends), especially if the person feels compelled to thank you in a comment to your initial post.

It should go without saying, but let me say it anyway: if the main purpose of you tagging everyone is to drive traffic to your page or account, it will show and it will backfire. As Dale Carnegie also said, “Give honest, sincere appreciation.”

#4: Leverage Location-Based Apps

This article isn’t a primer on FourSquare and Gowalla or how you can leverage these location-based apps. There are plenty of great resources out there for that, including How to Drive More Customers to Your Local Business with Social Geotagging and Why Foursquare Drives Business.

However, it’s important to realize that a lot of people are using location-based apps, and often linking them to their Twitter or Facebook accounts. In other words, when they check into a place they’re letting all their friends know where they are, and that’s good for your business.

Since so many Foursquarers and Gowallites are on Twitter and Facebook, you can easily engage them once they’ve visited your place of business. You can visit your page on either of these websites to see who’s checked in recently and often find a quick link to their Facebook or Twitter account. From there you can reach out, let them know you saw their check-in, and just wanted to see if their meal, haircut, or ride on the carousel was to their liking, and if there’s anything else you can do.

Use this tactic with discretion, however. Some people may find this intrusive, even when they have opted to check in and share their location with the world.

You should also start investigating Facebook Places. At the time of this writing, there’s no ad platform on the new geo-location offering from Facebook. However, that will inevitably change, giving you the opportunity to offer discounts to shoppers who check in and share their activity with their Facebook network. Retail shops should make sure that they are listed in Facebook places so their customers can check in and share their experiences with others.

You might want to encourage the “check-in” behavior of your patrons by setting up tabletop displays with information on Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.

#5: Incentivize Your Audience to Visit

Building loyalty and connections with customers is a great long-term success strategy. However, there are plenty of ways to provide incentives for your online audience to make an in-person visit with a more immediate impact:

Create Facebook- or Twitter-only discounts or coupons that people print up and bring in. Make them good for one day only to generate more visits to your page and create a sense of urgency.

Last-minute cancellation? Blast out to your audience that you have a sudden opening that afternoon for anyone who needs a massage or mani/pedi.

Slow lunch? Announce a discount for anyone who walks in and mentions Twitter or Facebook while placing his/her order.

Announce a special event at your bar. If you roll out the mechanical bull on Wednesday night, make sure you announce it (maybe with pictures). Or if two bachelorette parties suddenly show up, a large portion of your audience may want to know. And is that Marelisa Gibson who just walked in the front door?

Now it’s your turn: what other ways have you used Twitter or Facebook to drive traffic to your own place of business? Leave your comments in the box below.

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