What’s new with Facebook? As the company continues to improve, new technology is introduced. Facebook has announced chatbot and Live Chat. This has the potential to replace 1-800 numbers and other “Help” related outlets. Facebook is working with Live Chat developers who can potentially build contact buttons that directly message people for help on websites. Instead of having to email or call help stations, customers can interact with someone on Live Chat, which optimizes efficiency, timeliness, and customer satisfaction. Happy customers = Happy business.

Botlist. Didn’t you hear? It’s what all the newest phones are raging about!

Botlist is an app store for bots. That’s right, there’s now a centralized directory for all the bots you’ll ever need in one place, rather than from a variety of different apps and services. Compiling potential outlets that range vastly hopes to save time and room on your mobile devices.

Being an environmentally friendly business comes with its perks. First and foremost, you get to feel good about making the world a safer, healthier place. Reducing the use of energy and resources provides an opportunity to improve profitability through cost savings. Additionally, you get to take advantage of rebates and other incentives while attracting new environmentally-concerned customers and improving brand image. Lastly, a green company reduces risk by meeting legal requirements and anticipating future regulations like the Obama-Biden New Energy Plan.

Oniracom and AIGA Santa Barbara have collaborated on several events over the past few years, but this latest one might just be the best. We are proud to sponsor AIGA SB’s joint event with StartupSB, “Convert Like Crazy: 10 Design and Copy Hacks You Can’t Afford to Miss,” taking place April 15 from 6:30-8:00pm at Workzones.

The Doppler Lab buds are HERE. Literally. This generation has become one that is constantly moving toward new and innovative technology. To survive in this industry of entertainment and all its accessories, you have to be original. Originality is hard to come by when almost everything has been done, but Doppler Lab’s Here buds has accomplished this feat engineeringly and experientially.

Towards the end of January, Facebook introduced an organic targeting tool to help publishers reach the audience they want engaging with their content, and to analyze the type of people who actually end up reading it. There are three basic features in this new Audience Optimization tool.

Today’s marketing environment is a visual one. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but video content is increasingly dominating the digital sphere. By 2018, 89% of internet traffic will be video. Statistics and strategic moves from social platforms indicate why this prediction seems plausible:

• Within the last year, Facebook users went from watching 1 billion videos every day to more than 8 billion.
• Twitter, which acquired Periscope in March 2015, now autoplays their live streaming videos within feeds.
• Spotify is introducing video content to its Android app starting May 2016.

“There’s not a minute to waste.” Uber is well aware of this concept, and has made quite the name for itself by taking advantage of that. How Uber manages to stay on top of its competition, however, is a constant struggle. Uber steadily tries to beat out neighboring competition like Lyft, taxi companies, and other alternative modes of transportation to keep their name on top. The solution? Customization.

The well-known Ride Request feature that we’re already familiar with just got much more personalized. Passengers can now stay updated with news and updates all with the convenience of Uber’s new service called “Uber Trip Experiences”, which delivers playlists, local news, and travel tips all to the palm of your hands. Although third party experts will control the flow of content, each ride’s personalization comes from Uber. “The time the content takes to consume will be synchronized with the estimated duration of the journey.”

Thank you for making Solutions for Dreamers Fridays a huge success!

The crowd, food, chat, live music & of course, s’mores were all a hit! Thank you to Playback Recording Studio, StartupSB, and Up Global Regional Summit for helping us put on the event.

Here’s to more SFD Friday Nights! Check out some photos of the night, below!

User-generated web content has globally increased to the point where almost everyone participates in some way online, whether it is through blogging, Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn, or FaceBook. There is a new generation of people that create and consume more content online, and with this enters new ways to manage this increase in worldwide imagination.

Specifically for YouTube, a company called Fullscreen contributes to a user’s web content by giving them the tools to create and the strategies to gain fan support and recognition. Fullscreen fosters innovation worldwide by allowing web users to expand their networks and to connect to others.

And now, Fullscreen just announced that they will be supporting users in making full-length movies, allowing for exciting opportunity among YouTube users. They have already begun working on three projects with groups that got their start on online. Get ready to discover and view original movies by the YouTube community. For more info on Fullscreen’s first three original movies, read this Mashable article.

Are you a YouTube user? Considering checking Fullscreen out: www.fullscreen.com

With our fast pace of business, 2014 already feels like history.  Here’s an impressive look back at our year.

Have you or your friends used Venmo, or any other money transferring app but feel neglected by the inability to send the recipient a seflie along with your money transference? Fear no more! We now have… Snapcash. Snapchat and Square are collaborating on this project where Square will handle the actual cash movements and Snapchat will host the social networking platform. The deal will also provide Square with access to Snapchat’s 100 million plus monthly active users according to Mashable.

To use the new feature, one must live United States, have a debit card, and be 18 years old. Snapcash will be made first available to Android users, and shortly after it will be brought to iOS users. When using Snapcash, one also creates a Square account where the actual money transference will take place. This new feature exhibits Snapchat’s ability to push past its original limitations of strictly existing as a chat application and now becoming a surprising new competitor to mobile payment companies such as PayPal. 

Snapchat has recently begun marketing and developing platforms for Snapcash, so draining your bank account might be even easier in the near future. Also, we love the video Snapchat made for the new feature. It’s crazy but that’s part of the reason why it’s amazing!

Read more about it on Snapchat’s blog.

For those of you who might not know, AIGA is the professional association for design, and AIGA Santa Barbara is one of 69 chapters across the nation. One of many cool benefits of being on the AIGA SB board of directors is being able to put on great design-related, educational, and networking events for our local chapter and community. Oniracom has already been part of many AIGA events (Jacob and Tad have been Portfolio Day judges, and Oniracom hosted a studio tour this past May), but the biggest bang so far was definitely last Thursday’s “Art of Music” discussion, where Jacob was a panelist and I co-moderated with David Cowan, also of AIGA SB.

We were thrilled to be speaking with some legendary heavy hitters: Hale Milgrim (former President/CEO, Capitol Records); John Kosh (former Creative Director, Apple Records; current Principal at Ten Worlds Productions), and Andy Engel (former Art Director, CBS Records; current Principal, Andy Engel Design, Inc.), and they did not disappoint. The combined wisdom from our featured panelists was a great blend of business, design and inside information, and music by DJ Darla Bea helped set a groovy tone. Here’s a quick rundown of what we covered (full audio at the AIGA SB website; all photos by Tad Wagner):

Apple pay sets a new benchmark for mobile payments, however, they are not alone.  according to Mashable, MasterCard has been a pioneer of mobile commerce innovation for years, including the world’s first contact-less and mobile payment solutions. Apple Pay turned to MasterCard to help ensure high quality mobile transactions. Earlier in 2005, Mastercard used Near Field Communication technology to turn almost anything into an instant and secure form of payment, meaning your smartphone, bracelet or watch could soon replace your wallet. These new methods of payment, enable consumers to spend more than they regularly would with traditional payment methods. Mastercard, has been working to promote and distribute these new methods of payment and further expand these technologies promoting them to be faster, more secure and convenient. Some may be worried about the security of using contact-less payment methods, but master card ensures heightened security through 3 layers of tokenization, EMV cryptology, and biometrics meaning respectively a special number assignment which prevents hackers from stealing your card information, creating a one time transaction number, and is thumb print or passcode secure.  Wallets might be a thing of the past, while reliance on smart phones and technology is predicted to expand and grow.

When looking to boost the revenue generated by your website consider adopting one or all of the following strategies.

Dangle the Carrot with Inbound Marketing
Visitors to your website have a one-track mind. They want to get what they need and get the hell out. It’s up to you to capitalize on the opportunity to convert a visitor into a customer. The traditional solution to this challenge is to bombard your site visitors with endless calls to action for deals, discounts and more information. But the best solution is to present visitors with the information they seek while receiving something valuable in return. Inbound marketing is a practice that follows several steps to ensure that customers are engaged with the right offers and the right content at the right time.  Leads require cultivation, and inbound marketing nets you the information you need to convert visitors into leads and leads into sales.

Back to the carrot. Think about your website in terms of the value that it offers to visitors e.g. your services, your ‘secret sauce,’ your content. For example if your website hosts an article listing “5 Easy Ways to Grow Followers on Social Media” and the article is getting a lot of traffic from search terms like “Social Media Marketing Ideas” or “Improve my Social Media marketing,” you gain practical insight into the needs of your visitors. Use this insight to create content that will bring in more visitors. Now ask yourself, “what are visitors doing once they find what they are looking for?” If the answer isn’t “contacting my company” then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. 

If we apply inbound marketing to the example above, the scene changes dramatically. With inbound marketing we take a desirable piece of content like the “5 Easy Ways to Grow Followers” article, and convert it into a downloadable format like PDF or eBook. We display a portion of the article content to the visitor upon landing on the page. Then we offer them the complete downloadable file as instant gratification for filling out a simple contact form.  If you prefer to display full articles on your site, you can convert a collection articles into a topical ebook and offer it as the incentive, while keeping the full articles available to visitors.

With inbound marketing visitors volunteer their contact details including the background information you need to facilitate your sales process, in exchange for the valuable resource they were searching for. Smart leads are worth giving away a carrot or two.

Add Value to E-Commerce with Product Bundles
Your e-commerce business is missing out on revenue. It is typical for online merchants to sell out of a handful of products regularly, while the bulk of the products remain on the shelves failing to generate revenue. E-commerce brands are adopting a new strategy to aid in liquidating slow moving products: product bundling.

A product bundle is a package of two or more products sold together for one price on a single sku. The goal of product bundling is to increase your site’s average transaction value and ‘add value’ to popular products. We do this by bundling popular products with less popular but related products on a single sku at a discounted price. For example instead of selling a popular pair of boots for $300 and a slow moving bottle of boot cleaner for $25, you sell a bundle, the boots and the boot cleaner together for $315.

The key to this strategy is bundling your popular products with products that are not only slow moving, but also high margin. Bundling high-margin products allows you to discount the bundle while still clearing a sensible profit margin. In the example of the boot cleaner, assuming that the vendor purchased the boot cleaner at wholesale for less than $15, they are making more money from the sale of the bundle than they would be on a sale of the popular product alone. That being said, the other key to this strategy is to NOT bundle two popular products. Under most circumstances bundling two popular products at a discounted price can only hurt your revenues.

Try bundling products and then posting the bundle to your brand’s Facebook page as a limited time offer. Measure the response, rinse and repeat with different bundles until you discover a few winning combinations. You will find yourself selling out of bundles in no time.

Capitalize on Mobile Traffic with Responsive Design
Share of web traffic is shifting to mobile devices at increasing rates. Take a look at your site analytics and make note of the growth in mobile traffic over the last 24 months. If your site is not optimized for mobile and tablet devices, mobile visitors will become frustrated with the experience and leave your site for a competitor. Visitors can become equally as frustrated with an app or dedicated mobile site experience (e.g. mobile.oniracom.com) that does not support the full functionality of your site.

The solution is Responsive Design, a smart take on user interface design that kills three birds with one stone. The three ‘birds’ are desktop, mobile and tablet device visitors, and the one ‘stone’  is a responsive website. Take a minute to pull up http://oniracom.com on your computer and your phone or iPad. You will notice a few differences between the user interface on each device.

First, the URL for the website is the same whether opened on a desktop or mobile browser. Second, the site content is optimized to be viewed within the bounds of each screen without requiring any double-tapping or pinching. Third, the menu, header, footer and other website features also scale to be device optimized.

With responsive design, all of the design elements and content on the site respond to the browser window through which it is being viewed. All of this happens in real time using fluid, proportion based grids, flexible images and CSS3 media queries. The framework for the layout of the site is based on relative units like percentages, rather than absolute units like pixels. Responsive design is the new standard for website design and should be made a priority for the next iteration of your website.

Use responsive design to capitalize on your mobile traffic, creating a better experience for your site visitors and a smarter canvas for your content.

Need Help Getting Your Website Up to Speed?
Email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and I will assist you in any way I can!

Justin Davis is the Sales and Marketing Coordinator at Oniracom. You can follow Justin on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn

This morning at 10am PST, the whole world gathered for the unveiling of the highly anticipated iPhone 6 at the Apple Live event in Cupertino. However, Apple not only revealed the details of the next iPhone but also debuted their very first product in the world of wearable technology. The Apple Watch, described as “a smartwatch with inductive charging, a square face, sapphire glass, swappable bands, a heartbeat sensor and a rotating digital crown” by TechCrunch, is Apple’s sleekest new product proving their innovation in the advancement of technological development.

While Apple made it very clear that the watch is not simply an iPhone on your wrist (the watch is only compatible with iPhone 5 and 5s), the list of applications and functions available on the watch holds its own against its mobile counterpart. The design of the watch is classic Apple, with remarkably clean features and lines. All the watches use the innovative “digital crown”, aka the spinning thing on the side of the watch, to access the different interfaces and utilities.

A quick description of the aesthetic differences between the collections:
WATCH: The standard 38mm and 42mm watch faces with leather and stainless steel bands in a variety of loop designs and colors.
WATCH SPORT: Made to withstand sport-style use, these watch faces are made with a 60 percent stronger alloy case. This collection also includes a “sport band’ made of durable Fluoroelastomer in a variety of bright colors.
WATCH EDITION: This collection seems to be the high-end collection, with Rose and Yellow 18-karat Gold 38mm and 42mm watch faces and leather straps.

On February 25 of this year St. Vincent released her fourth album, St. Vincent. Critically acclaimed upon its release, what makes this album so significant from a marketing standpoint is the immense success of its sales immediately following its release. In its very first week on the shelves, St. Vincent sold 29,506 albums - a significant increase from the first week sales of her last album Strange Mercy. While no single factor can take credit for the overwhelming success of St. Vincent, the digital marketing campaign headed by The Found Group deserves some special attention for the methods they used in this campaign.

The Found Group, a company that provides “integrated digital marketing campaigns…for the music industry” utilized their own web tool, found.ee to target and retarget pools of potential customers and fans. A currently exclusive service, found.ee uses a shortlink to track how fans have interacted with their advertisements and what content from an artist a fan has viewed. They then program these links so that fans will be redirected to new content and advertisements instead of the same repetitive content over and over again.

Social media marketing has its challenges. At Oniracom, we navigate these challenges by employing a team of experts dedicated to providing the most engaging campaigns for clients. Our Community Management team works on behalf of clients to brainstorm and craft campaigns aimed at engaging the client’s audience in creative new ways. Our goal is to provide small and medium business owners with actionable advice for overcoming the challenges of social media marketing using the assets that are currently available.

The New Noise Festival is back at it in Santa Barbara and we are stoked to see all of the amazing artists and panels that are organized for this weekend. It’s New Noise’s 5th anniversary, so they’ve of course given us a killer line-up that includes FMLYBND, Cayucas, and HAIM (yes, HAIM) at the Block Party on Saturday. The festival kicks off tomorrow with some great artists at various venues sprinkled around lovely Santa Barbara. Some artists on Thursday include Ghost Tiger, The White Buffalo, and Andrew W.K.

Our very own Mike Wald will also be moderating a panel at the conference on Friday called, “If Music Could Talk: Marketing Your Brand.” The conference is a great way to learn about the music and entertainment industries. Our staff is excited to sit in on these panels!

The festival will come to a close on Saturday with the Block Party on Mason Street. What better place to rock out to Dante Elephante, Grizfolk, FMLYBND, Cayucas, and HAIM than in the Funk Zone?

Check out the full festival schedule here, and get your tickets as there is a limited supply!

Renowned music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine’s new project is almost ready to be released to the public. It is a new, online, subscription based music service. Now that in itself is nothing new as we already have Spotify amongst other streaming services. So what’s different this time around? What will make this successful?? Take a look as I attempt to break down several different features of this new service recently named: Beats Music.

The CEO & co-founder of Beats Electronics, Jimmy Iovine, plans to launch his new online music streaming service Beats Music (formally known as project Daisy) in the next couple of months. Noticing the lack of context and emotional connection in music streaming today, he has recently hired an expert team of curators to give the online music streamer a more personalized experience. If you want to find out who the curators are just click here.

Dove - the skin care brand - has the most viewed viral advertising campaign ever. It got there because of three key features: honest, simple, and patient.

HONEST
The campaign relies on testimonials, but unlike most commercials who do the same, the people on screen clearly want to testify. They aren’t actors selling something. They’re regular, seemingly middle class people talking, and they just happen to be on screen.

SIMPLE
There are no exotic locations, no sweeping vistas, or elaborate sets. The setting is a typical workplace without ideal lighting, however the set shown here looks much closer than, say one from Victoria’s Secret.

PATIENT
Since Dove did not constrain themselves to 30 or 60 second ad, they had time to tell a story. Over the course of the 3:01, we start to see what the artist Gil Zamora is doing right along with the women. They build a relationship with both sides and as a result, are both surprised and pleased when the reveal finally comes. There was no need to fit everything into very little time. If you have an honest story to tell, it will spread.

Check out the advertising campaign below and tell us what you think!

As of today Youtube, the provider of cute puppy videos, funny news interviews turned viral and the just plain bizarre, is now implementing paid subscriptions to select partners. What does this mean exactly? It means that starting with a subscription fee of 99 cents or more per month, about 50 of Youtube’s top partners will no longer be free.

From a business standpoint, it makes complete sense. In order to keep supporting the higher valued content, YouTube needs to implement changes that actually place higher value on said content. However, in the age of Netflix, Hulu+ and countless other entities segregating content into free and paid subscriptions, the web-scape seems to be shifting in a major way. 

This isn’t an outrage and this isn’t the end of the world. What I do believe is that we can expect the days of television, film and the web as separate entities are coming to a close.

The lines have been blurring for the last five years in the media world with smartphones, iPads/tablets, and Xbox or Wii becoming a main video console for many. It seems that with recent changes such as this new feature with Youtube, we are closer than ever to all of these mediums merging, placing an emphasis on better content, while also creating revenue for that content. With this emphasis on better content, it seems YouTube is really trying to focus on fostering a greater creative environment rather than shafting its biggest fans. 

Rest assured puppy fans, nothing is happening to your favorite cuteness addiction, just the content that actually has a good deal of production value behind it. 

We just finished and polished a nice infographic for a great company called RingRevenue, who are located right here in Santa Barbara. RingRevenue simplifies call marketing automation in order to drive more revenue for their customers.

This infographic is used by RingRevenue to explain and sell their services to potential and current clientele. We used a unique design that leveraged data and key performance indicators for RingRevenue. Our goals were to market RingRevenue with an engaging infographic that also showcased their creative marketing efforts.

We love how it turned out! Check it out below and visit RingRevenue online to find out more about their awesome company.

We are pleased to add a wonderful new Independent Sales Representative to the Oniracom team. Welcome, John Lucchetti! John has a background in online marketing, media production, and jazz guitar! He founded the blog Backstage Business, which you may be familiar with, as John featured Jacob a couple months ago. You can check out that feature here.

We asked John a little bit about his blog. He describes it as “a community for musicians, film makers, artists, writers, techies, entertainers, and designers to model, remix and share the best business ideas and resources from around the world. New innovations and insights frequently come from cross pollinating ideas from multiple disciplines, so my intent for the site is to help fuel their projects through stories and advice from successful creative entrepreneurs.” He also adds, “Oniracom is a company that I’ve been a fan of for some time due to their innovative work in the entertainment business, so I’m thrilled to join this world class team!” And we are excited to have you!

Check out John’s blog Backstage Business here, and be sure to *like* his Facebook page! 

British mobile provider Three (UK) seems to have struck a bit of viral marketing gold in the recent #danceponydance campaign that hit Youtube this month. The premise of the advert? Silly stuff matters.  How do they convey this slogan? With a dancing Shetland Pony of course.

In the age of Tivo and DVR, advertisements have gotten creative, and I can’t say that I mind too much.  That being said, companies face a need to reach audiences at a startling speed that will rise above the many Youtube videos of cute sloths in slow motion, adorable children saying the darndest things and, ahem, other companies trying to rise above viral happy accidents. And let me just say, they are doing a terrific job doing so. 

Exhibit A: Shetland Ponies.

A HUGE congratulations is in order for our video production partner, Cool Hand Look for winning two Central Coast Bronze ADDY Awards! We are so proud of Luke Archer of Cool Hand Look for receiving this great honor.

The ADDY Award Gala took place yesterday, March 13 and recognizes award winning marketing and advertising techniques, strategies, and presentations. Cool Hand Look received these two bronze awards for two awesome projects he produced for our clients Ron Whiteand Rolling Pet Vet. The two awards were for “creative excellence in the art of advertising, including a Bronze ADDY Award for the web series ‘Rontourage: On Tour with Ron White’ and a Bronze ADDY Award for an Integrated Campaign for the launch of local mobile veterinary hospital, Rolling Pet Vet.”

There’s a lot of buzz going around about Twitter’s new iPhone app Vine.  It’s a social networking app that allows you to take a 6 second video and edit in-phone. Many believe that this is the next big thing in social sharing. There is much speculation as to what will make or break this app in the beginning stages of catching on (Mashable), but rather than being critical like I usually am, I’m going to focus on the positives.

This simple little idea allows anyone to create his or her own cinematic masterpiece… or videos of our very own Calia eating chocolate cream pie…

That’s what I like about this new app. The possibilities are endless. You can re-create your own version of the Harlem Shake sensation re-sweeping the nation as seen on illustrator / video animator Ian Padgham’s Twitter account @origiful [See it here]

We are happy to present our brand new site, built using responsive design and features 12 slides or “tarot cards” (as our staff calls them) outlining our most popular services.

Click on a card to find out more about that service and to see portfolio examples!

The “Web Production” slide refreshes the page with a featured slideshow at the bottom, showcasing our work. What happens when you click on “The Gaslight Anthem?”

We just recently finished a project for our client Buyvite which we are extremely proud of! The process included various elements such as, consulting, building storyboards, designing a unique inforgraphic, writing a script, recording voice overs, and animating and editing a video for Buyvite’s website. Our lead strategist Justin worked very hard on implementing and creating unique ideas, which is definitely conveyed in the finished product.

Justin explains the step by step process from consulting to the animation:

Keep up with @Oniracom, @JacobTell (Jacob Tell, CEO), @MikeWald (Mike Wald, CBDO), and @JustTheDavis (Justin Davis, Lead Strategist) for all the latest from the ground at SXSW!

Here’s some snapshots:

What are you looking forward to most about Super Bowl XLVI? The game? The parties? The halftime show? As the most watched TV broadcast of the year, the Super Bowl brings much hype. Although the football game is the most obvious reason why people tune into the broadcast, many people tune in for other reasons, specifically the commercials.

Companies spend months strategizing, preparing, creating, and producing innovative and engaging commercials that will grab the viewer’s attention in hopes of promoting their product. In years past, the commercials were kept secret up until the moment they aired and were shown once during the live taping of the game, but last year some marketing officers went against the traditional approach and implemented a new plan of attack. As our society has become more and more engrossed into the world of social media, companies have discovered that combining their commercials with a social media overlay increases not only the awareness of their product, but also “gets the ball rolling” before the commercial airs live on TV.

Perhaps “innovator” is most appropriate to summarize Steve Jobs.  But for proper homage, a new word should be added to our vernacular, highlighting Steve Jobs’ genius of communicating his innovations—he leveraged rich understanding of marketing, type and typefaces, images and movies, letters and words: the 1984 Ad, Apple II, NeXT, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, Think Different (sans ‘ly’) to name a few. 

How about “Jobsian Marketing”?

After all, his legacy is the very act of creation paired with exceptional marketing build up, excitement of rumors and secretive roll-outs which turned millions into disciples.  We, the ambassadors, spread the gospel, hoping to convert the meek, evangelizing the culture of Steve Job’s innovations and in turn become the strongest marketing arm any corporation could hope for.

Perhaps the pinnacle accomplishment for an inventor is to revolutionize the industry of their invention.  Steve Jobs revolutionized several industries, enabling and accelerating the analogue > digital shifts of the early 21st century.  His love of both process and product turned us on, tuned us in and made us believe.

Steve Job created a true new world order, where a single person can successfully manage their global business from the palm of their hand; created a film studio that disseminates genuine storytelling in an industry easily labeled as tired and uninspired; created a brand new market to support a once unknown product now casually known as the Tablet; created convenient media consumption, changing our expectations for how, when and where we are able to enjoy our books, music, films and video games.

Embedded in his great creations, Steve Jobs delivered great simplicity.  His genius can be further seen by pushing Apple to be the first to remove the floppy disc drive from home PCs in the 1990s, or shipping units that had no dial-up modems when high speed internet was not yet available everywhere, or most recently shipping a line of laptops without a CD/DVD-ROM drive, coaxing people to depend on USB and WIFI.

Above all, Steve Job’s passion for his family, work and play immortalizes him as one of the world’s modern great thinkers, doers and innovators.  He brought us the future before it was due.

Where do we go from here?  Mimicry may be a form of flattery, but Steve Jobs would be disappointed with a legion of copy-cats.  It is all of our time to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation, creation and marketing. 

Thank you for setting the bar Steve Jobs.

This Summer has been jammed packed with fun and exciting new projects. One of our favorites has been getting to work with Doheny Days Music Festival 2011, which is finally happening THIS weekend in Dana Point, CA.

Earlier this year, Omega Events, the group behind Doheny Days, came to us to create a web presence for the revival of this festival that has a long standing history in the Southern California music scene after a 7 year hiatus. We enjoyed working closely with the team at Omega Events to define their overall branding including logo, colors, aesthetic and general vibe as illustrated on DohenyDays.com.

In addition to creating their website, Omega Events hired us to implement a strategic Marketing and Advertising Campaign during the summer, including online advertising, give-away contests and other creative marketing initiatives. We’re stoked on the success of this campaign and are loving the public’s response and excitement for Doheny Days. This first year back paves the road for a successful festival for years to come.

Want to know what to expect during Doheny Days? Here’s a little insight into the amazing two-day festival, which is sure to end the summer on the right note!

Marketing over social networks used to be easy. You would create a MySpace page, upload a few songs and a picture or two and let millions of users do the rest by virtually spreading the word. Fast forward to now – boy, has that changed. With a seemingly ever-expanding plethora of social networking sites all trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, marketing yourself over these platforms has moved from hobby to chore to nearly a full time job. The typical artist must manage and keep up-to-date their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, and any other social media platforms they’ve chosen to market themselves over. Most artists will confess that constantly updating each and every one of their online marketing platforms takes much longer than they’d prefer. The process is arduous at best, and any artist will acknowledge their true desire to use that time creating music. Yet, in the modern age it’s an integral portion of anyone’s marketing strategy.

Enter Musedash, a new online application that lets musicians manage all their social network profiles from one main dashboard. From this dashboard, you can post content (be it status updates, links, news, or photos and videos) and choose to which networks you’d like the content to appear on. So you could simultaneously post a news article on your Facebook profile, your Facebook page, your Twitter, your MySpace, and any other applicable network – all with just one click. Musedash sets itself apart from competing services like Hootsuite and Ping.fm by catering specifically to musicians. And, recognizing that most musicians are not computer geeks in their spare time, creator Hilke Ros and the rest of the Musedash team have made user-friendliness a top priority. The result is a clean, simple and straightforward application designed to make social networking easier, not more complicated. Potentially, using Musedash to manage multiple social networks simultaneously could save valuable time and frustration, and would eliminate the possibility of mistakes or inconsistent information on different networks.

Late last month, the unveiling of Google+ prompted the world over reconsider the future of social media and online networking, and many began to wonder if The Goog’s latest product would boast enough innovative features to dethrone Facebook, king of the social networking realm. Speculation has run rampant as the search giant’s latest foray into new media gains momentum, much of which attempts to size up Google+ against Facebook. Many in the tech world are projecting whether or not + will be successful both in stealing existing social network users and attracting new ones. But here at Oniracom, my compadres and I have been interested in how Google+ will integrate into the larger scheme of social media marketing and brand growth strategies. While wishful thinking would allow Google+, Facebook and others to harmoniously coincide with each other in the virtual world, it is becoming ever-more clear (as is obvious with Facebook’s Skype contract retaliation) that there really may only be room for one. It’s impossible to know which network, if any, will prevail, but Google+ is making a strong attempt by promising features and upgrades not available on Facebook or other social networking sites.

Likester is “the global popularity engine,” here to help you understand what people like on Facebook. This includes anyone from your best friends to people you have never met that live across the world. The site is broken up into five major sections: My Likes, Friends, Everyone, Trending and Like List. With these tabs, you are able to sort through popular likes on Facebook in comparison to your own personal likes. Likester is potentially a great tool for social marketing; it can help any Facebook page increase their fan base!

“My Likes” provides an interface to easily view the items you personally like. Here you can sort you likes as entertainment, people, places and things. Likester displays how many of your friends like the same things as you, and how many total Facebook users like the same pages. When comparing your likes to others, you have the option of browsing according to the location of users. Additionally, you can manage your likes through Likester.

We are proud to present our updated Solutions Page on the Oniracom website.  We like using the filter by Solutions on the upper left.  Click on any Solution in the grid or alphabetical listing along the left column to launch a litebox overlay with details about our offerings.

Groupon,a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide, is very much in the hot seat when it comes to quick and easy deals. Recently, “Google Offers” a service provided by Google wants to take part in this new craze. The company has now gone live with a signup for beta programs in Portland, Oregon, several cities in California, including Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco, as well as areas around New York City.

Groupon has been notorious for its awesome deals. However, I am definitely curious to see what Google has in store. Especially, since they promise “50% off or more at places you’ll love.”

Oniracom is proud to announce the new website for Ron “Tater Salad” White, the popular stand up comedian who is a charter member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.  Ron has been nominated twice for the Grammy Awards and is RIAA certified 10x Platinum for CD/DVD sales of over 10 million.

Don’t forget his famous slogan…. “You can’t fix stupid.”

Oniracom is gearing up to work on more projects with Ron’s management who has been an incredibly savvy and wonderful team.

Oniracom has teamed up with our good friends at SoundCloud to bring you the first listen of
G. Loves latest release from Brushfire Records, Fixin’ To Die, exclusively on Conan O’Brien’s website Team Coco.  Head over to TeamCoco.com to hear the full album a week before it hits stores and you can download an exclusive track right on G. Love’s website.

The switch from the old profile to the new profile that Facebook pulled on its users in late December/early January anticipated some other alterations to occur. Alas, the new Pages on Facebook is here! The new Pages redesign resembles and operates like a user’s regular profile. However, there are multiple differences in regards to the Page’s and their admins.

The new Pages consists of all the features of the new profile more or less. For example, the menu bar is on the left-hand column with links to the wall, photo albums, videos, tour dates, etc., which also eliminates the information box that was a component of the old profile and old pages of Facebook. The edit tab option has therefore also switched to the very top of the page. Admins can now click up top to edit their pages, which directs them to editing the info, apps, profile picture, marketing, etc.

Now here’s a brilliant album release campaign. UK songstress Adele, grammy winning “Chasing Pavements” singer, is releasing 21 (XL, Columbia) the much anticipated follow up to her debut album, 19. To generate buzz and increase fan engagement with the record in the weeks leading up the it’s US release, team Adele has set up quite a creative splash page:

Facebook introduced the new profile to its users this past December, and hoped to upgrade all users from the old profile to the new profile early during the new year. Gradually reeling its users towards the new profile allowed users to sample the new profile before it officially became mandatory, which stirred up different types of discussions between almost all Facebook users. Not only did the new layout get users talking, but the new features such as exposing all users to individual friendships and connecting interests between them, caused much debate between whether the old profile or the new profile was viewed as “better.”

By : Erik Koral - FanManager Founder/CEO - 1.10.11
http://www.fanmanager.net

Hey everyone,

One of my new years resolutions was to do a bit more personal blogging and provide the music and marketing communities with some cool tips in navigating the web and managing your street campaigns.  I have been in the marketing field for over 10 years now and running FanManager for 6 years, so I wanted to post some of my observations and let you know what has worked and what hasn’t.

The entry below will cover everything you need to know about online street teaming in this new digital era.  Although physical street teams are still important and relevant for many hard touring bands, online street teaming is becoming much more prevalent.  Here is why…

1) It has never become so easy to reach tens of thousands of people in just a few minutes. In today’s ADD culture, people want instant bite sized bits of information. People are tuning out billboards and traditional advertising and are much more willing to listen to a recommendation of a new track, video, or concert from a friend.  This is why platforms like Twitter and Facebook are so important today

Peter Tanham of Amp Music Marketing writes, “When we start working with any musician, two of the most important goals we start with are:

1.) Build a strong mailing list

2.) Build a popular Facebook page

Fans are going to be more comfortable interacting with the artist through these mediums, and they are also the ones that drive the most sales.”

Highlights from this article include:

The importance of Facebook Ads

Implementing effective Facebook Ads

1.) If You Like Those Guys…  it’s called a “power play,” pick musicians that are similar to your style and pay to be played to their fans.

2.) Building A Good Landing Page: make sure your Facebook ad redirects them to a customized landing page which will encourage them to click the “like” button with some incentive to hear or get your music. Make sure it is the most similar sounding music to the artist you referred to in the “power play.”

3.) Target Your Ads… and run multiple campaigns!

4.) Ask Questions. Encourage Clicks and Likes - (reference pseudo ad image on the left).

Flowtown.com just posted this great infographic on the Millennial Generation. (Also frequently referred to as Generation Y, the Echo Boomers, the Net Generation, etc.)

If you are doing any sort of marketing or posting on the internet, you need to know this group of people.  These are the innovators, the sharers, the first people that are going to interact with your brand. Especially for younger bands, this is the group that is going to be passing your music around and building your buzz.  Make sure you know where to hit them.

If this graph sparks your interest at all, there are a ton of resources on understanding this Net generation, including the shift that is happening right now as they are entering the workforce and looking for creative, collaborative positions.  I highly recommended checking out Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World for further reading.

“At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco, Eric Tseng said that Facebook “really sees mobile as the future,” and that we can expect to see Facebook’s “Like” buttons in mobile applications soon.

Tseng used geolocation as an example to illustrate the power of the mobile Open Graph. If you were to walk near a coffee shop and get a location-aware notification that there’s a happy hour going on there, you’ll probably be even more inclined to visit it if the notification comes bundled with recommendations from your Facebook friends.”

We have compiled a list of what we find to be the most interesting and informative music blogs on the web. The list amounts to 21 music blogs, but is divided into four categories; Music Blogs (general reviews of up-and-coming music), International Blogs (reviews up-and-coming music from specific countries and around the world), Entertainment Blogs (covers news and reviews of a variety of art forms), and Music Industry Blogs (covers the latest happenings of what is moving and shaking in the music industry).

Direct-to-Fan (D2F) marketing is essentially creating a relationship with your fans through a marketing outlet, fans help you and in return you help them. D2F marketing is a creative business model that allows artists to eliminate the need for a middle man by delivering music directly to fans.  Which means, artists keep a higher percentage of their own sales, compared to the current business model where major labels, distributors or even iTunes take 30% or more away from the artist! D2F is most easily identified by free content give-aways in exchange for a tweet, Facebook shout-out, or e-mail sign up, reference MattCosta.com.

However, D2F marketing is evolving to include custom storefronts and marketing analytics that enable you to better grasp your audience and sell directly from your website and various social profiles. After researching the following sites; Bandbox, Nimbit and Topspin, I have outlined a detailed explanation of the costs, benefits, similarities, and differences between each platform. 

Read More…

I’ll be honest. When I see the ubiquitous PowerPoint title page start off a presentation, I groan inwardly. And I’m guessing you do too.
Despite becoming a staple of the business and scholastic world, Microsoft’s presentation application hasn’t evolved beyond its linear bulleted slide formating since its release over twenty years ago.

Enter Prezi.

Prezi is an online presentation tool that does away with the slide-by-slide approach of Powerpoint entirely. Instead, it utilizes a visual map with embedded words, links, images and videos. Users can navigate this visual map by zooming in and out, resulting in an interactive and visually stimulating product.
Perhaps Prezi is best explained by watching a sample project. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea until I saw a demonstration on their site. Check out the video below:

The pliable interface of Prezi means that every presentation is unique to its creator. And it’s FREE. Best of all, it’s web-based, which means that Prezi presentations can be created and shown on any computer with internet access. No more emailing presentations to yourself, hoping desperately that the computer you’re presenting on will have the necessary OS and software. Users are also provided with an offline player in case you’re presenting somewhere without access to the internet.

Prezi offers three different levels of pricing: Free, Enjoy & Pro. Every version grants users access to the editing software and an offline player and the ability to download & embed presentations into websites and blogs, as well as the abiliy to import images, videos, PDFs, & Flash files. The free version allots you 100MB worth of file storage but ensures that all your presentations will be public. For $59 a year, users can quadruple their file storage and are given the option of making their presentations private. Pro, at $159 a year, lets premium users download a desktop application of the editing software so they may work offline.
Prezi.com also has a forum component, in which you can view the works of others, comment and perhaps choose to “pat them on the back” for a job well done.

One of my favorites is the Prezi that accompanied the lecture “Mixing Mind & Metaphor,” at TED Global 2009 given by James Geary. Check it out here.

I’ll admit at first it takes a little while to get used to the interface, especially if you’ve been brought up on Powerpoint. But Prezi is relatively intuitive and the site contains many helpful tutorial videos to assist with the basics and offer tips and tricks. Once you get the hang of it, the entire process is strangely liberating.

What do you think? Will you be using Prezi for your next presentation?

Last Friday I had a great opportunity to listen to Jay Matheson from Apple Computer speak at our local City College about personal branding.  As a small business owner, I never turn down these special moments to learn, no matter how versed I believe I may be in a particular field.  We can always learn more information, or see familiar information from new perspectives.  Please Read More…

Traditional 80’s fast food Marketing is back!  For better or worse…

A Business market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs.

In this case, Burger King and Microsoft have teamed up pushing the “Windows 7 Whopper” to their market segment (very very hungry and/or large people in Japan).  For 7 days only, you can shell out Â¥777 (or $8.55) for 7 beef patties on a sesame seed bun, in support of Windows 7.  BK’s in Japan are limiting this price to the first 30 customers each day, upping the price to Â¥1,450 ($17.10), officially breaking the “7” theme.

But this campaign has pushed beyond the limits of traditional marketing into the digital realm.  Yes, blogs all over the web have picked up on this story (including our own SFDBlog.com).

For blog publishers to resist re-posting this image is nearly impossible.  It has all the necessary elements: two American company logos, Japanese characters and 7 mouthwatering beef patties.

But I would like to give a huge thank you to Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson & co. who attempt to down this burger for Generation YouTube to “enjoy.”

Rumors are starting to fly about Googles new music service.

It seems as if the service will be going after Bing who is trying to offers users a better search engine.  Google’s music service would simply be an upgrade to their search results for music.  If you search for an artist like Jack Johnson it would now give you a small list of some of his most popular songs and videos pulling data from music services such as LaLa, MySpace, and iLike.  You can stream the music right there on the same search results page, watch the video and even click a link to download and buy it.  While nothing is official yet we have been working on updating some of our clients on those music services just in time for press release.

Check out the sneak peak at what the service might look at over at TechCrunch.

New Noise Santa Barbara was a great success.  Being their first year, nobody was certain how heavily attended the concert component or conference component would be.  Both turned out to be a success!  People raved about Michael Franti’s Arlington Theatre performance, Jack Johnson’s film screening with last minute acoustic performance as well as many of the sold out club shows. 

The New Noise Panels were also well attended and talked and tweeted about all weekend.  I was asked to speak on two panels, “The Future Is Unwritten” and “The Green Musician.”  Below I’ve written a list of 5 items from each panel that I learned from other panelists.

What I learned from other panelists on “The Future is Unwritten:”

(click “Read More…” below)

What I learned from other panelists on “The Green Musician:”

(click “Read More…” below)