Music is a [...]]]> In preparation for TEDxMongKok, I thought it would be interesting to try and catch up with a few of the crowdsourcing personalities. This week’s guest post is from my good friend and Singaporean entrepreneur – Jerry Chen. He is the business development director for Express in Music. Their company slogan is – Be Heard!

Music is a form of art and art is subjective. This is why through crowdsourcing, with a single project brief – there can be multiple interpretations by musicians (composers, singer-songwriters) who come up with different variation of sound designs and songs. On the other end (i.e. the client), a manager may propose ONE song he thinks is suitable, however the director can possibly think otherwise. Thus, crowdsourcing comes with the solution of a variety.

Furthermore, speed is of essence. One can’t simply expect a musician to have inspiration given a short timeframe, therefore when many musicians see a particular project, some may have the inspiration at that point of time to come up with a music track fast.

We are soon going to crowdsource audio branding solutions through www.expressmelody.com to have musicians not only have their music pieces being heard as a sound ambient but also get paid at the same time through royalties.

Apart from the audio crowdsourcing aspect, I will like to share with you a music video which I crowdsourced for participation through a Facebook shout-out.

Learn More: Express in Music

Here is a practical example from my work [...]]]> I have always appreciated the way in which Altimeter Group has consistently produced and shared information around social media.The latest deck that caught my attention is entitled “The Rise of Digital Influence”. Kudos to Brian Solis and the brand case studies that were included in the report.

Here is a practical example from my work for readers to review. Please do not hestitate to contact me with any questions or thoughts on how your organization can begin to understand digital influence.

My initial thought: Digital influence is here to stay. Companies that are trying to engage influencers without truely understanding what their target influencers are communicating and who their communicating with will have spent precious resources without a return or proper engagement.

Finetuning Influencer Scores: During my time on contract at Microsoft, we reviewed the klout scores for all the developer/IT pro followers in our @microsoftkb twitter account. This required some inhouse development work. This wasn’t the interesting part. Once we were able to figure out the topics that various influencers were writing about, we could then see a content map of influencers who may not have necessarily had a “high influencer” score in the first place. (note: this was done before Klout started segmenting their influencers by topics)

The Outcome: Once we identified influencers based on the microsoft product content we were then able to set our action plan in motion. We were able to share relevant Microsoft documentation in a focused and targeted way rather than sending out information across twitter feeds to people that wouldn’t be interested. An example, once we knew who was influencial in SQL Server, we could tweet them directly and they would have information for their blog and readership.

Take Away: Know your target influencers and understand their content before assuming you can reach out and leverage them for marketing, pr or customer service.

By Freemake, proud developer of YouTube Converter

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

How do you stay creative?

In my role as a social media project manager, I have been fortunate to wear many hats that make the job that much more fun! As for this video, I was part of the creative team, interviewed the key stateholder in the project and played a high tech geek. I personally like the ode [...]]]>

In my role as a social media project manager, I have been fortunate to wear many hats that make the job that much more fun! As for this video, I was part of the creative team, interviewed the key stateholder in the project and played a high tech geek. I personally like the ode to Minority Report.

If you manage a data center undersstand the technical complexities of SQL, Learn more at: www.systemcenteradvisor.com

Disclosure: This blog post represents my personal viewpoint and not that of Microsoft.