In the first post, “I want to be KISSED“, I performed a quick social media presence assessment.  The results of the assessment showed a few places where the existing social media strategy utilized by KISS, could be improved.  The second post, “Oshawa – KISSed, Not Missed!” explored the media backlash toward KISS for not including Oshawa, Canada on the North American Tour even though the city won the KISS fan-routing tour contest.  Oshawa is getting a concert and Gene Simmons was a little outraged at the media for spoiling a surprise.

Anyway, I received this e-mail from KISSonline about the pre-sale.  This e-mail had a different look to it from previous ones.  Hmm, need to go investigate further.  Sure enough – at least from a social media site perspective (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, iLike, and Twitter), the sights have a more cohesive appearance.  I’d like to think someone over at the KISS organization read my first post (since I did send a copy to them) and take action.  At least someone there realized they had a disconnect and addressed it.   Kudos to KISS.

PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 08, 2009 – Palo Alto, CA, September 8 – Palo Alto based Social Media Academy announces its Black Diamond global social media consultant network. Certified social media consultants from the US, Europe, Singapore and Australia are set to collaborate on a global scale to help small, medium and large businesses create social media programs that are specifically tailored to their social media ecosystems. The group engages based on unified methodologies from the Social Media Academy, including the Four-Quadrant Social Media Assessment model, the Strategy Hexagon for developing a robust social media plan, and five other standardized methodologies.

Axel Schultze, Founder, CEO Social Media Academy

Social Media Academy founder Axel Schultze said: “Business leaders have a hard time to select a social media consultant that is right for them. Too many self proclaimed social media experts only confuse customers. We conquer this problem by creating a worldwide standard for methodologies, strategy development and social media execution plans. The Black Diamond Network consists of a worldwide network of certified social media consultants with a very transparent and unified experience profile.”

“Mark Moore, from Atlanta, GA, one of the founding members said: “One of our big advantages is our globally standardized methodology approach. Any member can jump into any project and knows exactly how we all work. This provides a great project security for small and large customers”. Boughty Canton, another founding member, from Singapore commented: “Businesses begin to understand that social media is not just a marketing tool but a general business strategy. As Black Diamonds members, we help companies to think and execute strategically”. Wendy Soucie from Wisconsin said: “An important aspect of the Black Diamond Network is our ability to provide very cost efficient social media packages to small businesses. Even though we are connected in a global network – the individual Black Diamonds operate locally. Each Black Diamond brings to the engagement an understanding of a particular regional area or even a vertical market dynamic.” Rick Speciale from Sydney, Australia and Catherine Sherwood from Albuquerque, NM see another advantage of the Black Diam ond group in the collaboration of different subject matter experts. “We both focus on the financial services industry. Collaborating with other experts while maintaining a standardized operating method gives customers the breadth and depth in expertise they expect”. Barbara Daniels from Mesa, AZ, also one of the founding members stated: “We collaborate on projects and strategic engagements as a group, each bringing our unique talents and backgrounds to create a synergy in the fast-paced world of social media that is the first of its kind. We take social media far beyond the marketing aspect, assisting companies in building mindshare and market share by imploring the proven principles and standardized methodologies of the Social Media Academy.”

The Black Diamond group is orche strated by the Social Media Academy and organizes knowledge webinars in the US, Europe and Asia helping businesses to better comprehend the impact social media has to their business, their market and their ecosystem. The Knowledge webinar series starts in September and is free of charge. A Black Diamond reception is established to help companies find the best social media strategist for their respective needs. The next leadership class, which is the base education to become a black diamond, starts September 16.

More details are available at: http://socialmedia-academy.com/BlackDiamonds

More corresponding links:

Social Media Academy http://socialmedia-academy.com

Social Media Leadership class http://socialmedia-academy.com/html/us-leadershipclass.cfm

Social Media Academy Methodology overview http://socialmedia-academy.com/html/methodologies.cfm

Social sites from people mentioned in this press release:

Axel Schultze http://xeeSM.com/AxelS

Barbara Daniels http://xeeSM.com/wk4coffee

Boughton Canton http://xeeSM.com/Boughty

Catherine Sherwood http://xeeSM.com/CatherineSherwood

Mark Moore http://xeeSM.com/RMarkMoore/

Rick Speciale http://xeeSM.com/speciale/

Walter Adamson http://xeeSM.com/walter/

Wendy Soucie http://xeeSM.com/wendysoucie/

# # # The Social Media Academy is an education and research institute providing education for business professionals from all industries on how to best apply social media to their respective businesses.

Disclaimer: Issuers of the press releases are solely responsible for the content of their press releases. PRLog.Org can’t be held liable for the contents of the press releases. Report Abuse

And that’s one of the first steps in defining your social media strategy… Identify your customer and where they participate on the social web.

So if you feel like your social media programs  or initiatives are a bit mushy?  Maybe its time to assess where the conversations you want to be involved in are happening.   So take a bite of that granola bar and go find your community!

In April, KISS ran a contest asking fans to vote for their hometown to be included in the band’s upcoming tour, with the top vote getter getting a concert in their town. Oshawa Canada topped the list, but when the list of the “KISS Alive 35″ concert dates was released this week, Oshawa was not on the list.

Asked why Oshawa was not included,  KISS responded that the town was skipped for “logistical reasons“, and a rep added that they would still “get something special”.  Of course, major media coverage and angry fans ensued, which forced KISS to announce that they are in fact playing in Oshawa on October 7th – the release date for the new KISS album “Sonic Boom”.

Gene Simmons has voiced his anger at the media since the “surprise”  KISS was leaked prematurely.

My opinion is that the band should have stated the concert was going to happen in Oshawa and then revealed that it would be a live premiere of the new album.   You can’t dangle a carrot like they did and then not appear to follow through on it.  That’s the quickest way to ruin your reputation – not that the members of KISS really need to worry about that.  It might not work for your brand however.

What do you think?   Is the media to blame?  Was the backlash appropriate considering the band did use social media to promote the tour and then appeared to not honor the outcome?

This is the Recorded Presentation from July 22, 2009

Topics covered:

• What business managers need to consider about social media
• An example case study for a complete social media assessment (assessing customers, brand, partners and competition).  This case study was performed by certified consultants using the methods and models developed by the Social Media Academy.

About the case study:

This case study shows that starting a social media engagement with some cool campaigns and hoping to attract some customers is counter-productive and may cause more damage than progress.  It furthermore demonstrates that without a thorough assessment – a social media strategy is almost impossible to build.

Learn to develop a holistic view of the social web and create a strategy that leads to business success and a mutually profitable customer experience.
What are your take-aways:

• A comprehensive insight in social media for business.
• Understand what you could do even if your company doesn’t have a social media strategy yet.
• Learn that the first step to social media success is an assessment and what the assessment includes.

Edited on 07/31/2009 by R. Mark Moore.
Removed registration and added embedded link to the presentation.

Mark attends a KISS concert in Hartford, CT (1996)

To be fair, let me explain my expectations.  I consider Gene Simmons to be an insightful marketing minds.  I mean love him or hate him, this guy has been selling himself and KISS for decades.  Even if you don’t like his stuff, you can observe that he gets it done.  So my expectations were pretty high.  I expected that a social media campaign such as a fan routed tour would have a very strong online presence.  I expected that Gene Simmons would have his folks working with the cutting edge technology that is pervasive in social media today.

So, what did I find?  I was surprised.  Keep in mind, I only did a bird’s eye assessment – nothing more than 45 minutes total.  In this assessment, I look at the major social media and bookmarking sites.  This is not enough evidence to build a plan around, but it is enough to give you a sense of the social media presence of an entity. Here are my findings:

Websites: I was dismayed to find that KISS.com is not owned by KISS.  They needed to go with KISSonline.com.  Given the productions that KISS usually generates and the financial capital they hold – I would have expected a more polished website.  Same with GeneSimmons.com.  The visual feel is very similar and echos the presence on Facebook and MySpace.  Consistency s good,  I just expected more.

LinkedIn: I was not surprised here.  I did not find evidence of any band members – even using their real names.  This doesn’t mean they aren’t there – it just means I did not find any I could certifiably state were legitimate.  I did find several impostors.  I also found one LinkedIn group which uses the band logo.  I am surprised here at least from the standpoint of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.  Being the business mogul he is, I expected to find Gene with a presence on LinkedIn.   I was hoping that Paul Stanley was promoting himself as an artist here as well.   I guess when you’re famous you don’t need a LinkedIn profile, but I disagree with that notion.

Facebook: There is a legitimate KISS fan page on Facebook with over 100,00 fans.  Figuring 2 million Facebook users, that’s 5% of the population.  There are some other fan pages, but they are either tribute bands or user generated fan pages.  The presence here is very similar to the KISS website.  So kudos for consistency.  There are even Facebook applications dedicated to KISS.  So on initial appearance (remember bird’s eye view), we have a uniform brand so far.   Gene Simmons also has his own Facebook page set up, so we are starting to see him carry his personal brand over to the online world.  Way to go Gene!

MySpace: As expected, there is a MySpace page for KISS.  I would have been shocked if there wasn’t.  When I think music and social media, I think of MySpace first as a place a band would be.

Twitter: Initially I was expecting a ton of impostors on Twitter.  The #Kiss hashtag is active with activity and shows related tweets.  I was able to find 5 accounts on Twitter which appear to be legitimate KISS representation, Gene Simmons was one.  Gene does not tweet very often and has only been on since March 2009.  Definitely a presence, but it could be tightened up a bit.  I also see how Twitter could become an integral part of the KISS machine – read on after the assessment notes.

YouTube: I was not surprised here.  There is a large KISS presence on YouTube – mostly fan generated though.  Who cares, its a large number of videos blaring KISS music.  This would be a great place to connect with the audience.  Heck, consider doing something official on Pandora as well.

Groups on Google and Yahoo: There are a large number of groups on Yahoo and Google talking about KISS – the band.   This is good because this is where the fan base is hanging out.   Knowing where your customers/clients/fans hang out is important – it lets you craft and target your message.  Mr. Simmons excels at that.

Delicious / Digg: As expected, there weren’t many (in comparison to everything else) bookmarks on Delicious or Digg related to KISS.   There were about 300 total between the two sites (yes there will be some overlap).  For a band, I’m not sure how important this area is to build a presence on.

SlideShare: I was just curious and went here to see.  There were 3 presentations involving KISS.  I expected none or for them to be related to Gene Simmons only.

So in a nutshell, I feel that Gene Simmons has a more cohesive social media presence than his band.  I also feel that there are some things that could be done to tighten up the messaging and branding on both fronts.  There is absolutely a role that social media could play in elevating the KISS brand and like many corporations – they are struggling with it a bit.  The good things are that the presence is strong where expected – those places just need to be connected together with a strategic purpose.  I see evidence that Gene is doing that for his personal brand.   There are plenty of places to engage the community as well.  This is where I would focus the Eventful Tour Demand.  As for the other places such as LinkedIn?  They may not matter nor may Gene care – I think a presence there would reinforce him as a maven of marketing and detract from the impostors.

That said, I still love the idea of using social media to have fans vote on what cities and in what order KISS will play it’s North American tour.  That’s an awesome idea and one that should be capitalized on.  And here’s the final idea for using Twitter.  Listen carefully Gene…  Set it up so that your set list on the tour is fan generated by Twitter.  My vote will be for “God of Thunder”.

For those wanting to do their own Bird’s Eye assessments, here’s the table I use to capture the data in.  Again it’s simple and shouldn’t take a lot of time.  Add columns to do a comparison between entities.  Again, this exercise is not enough to build a plan or strategy around.  The purpose of this exercise is to determine online presence from a social media perspective;  show were potential conversations regarding your brand, product, or service occur; and at a high level capture the sentiment of the conversations that are occurring.