Leave it to creative people to devise a creative way to raise money for their projects.

Kickstarter has become a fundraising force for artists of all kinds: bands, singer/songwriters, indy film producers, community theater groups, food trucks or new product designers. And the potential is boundless.

We like the community-minded approach that underlies the crowd-funding platform; the idea simply extends integration of web content and social media into one of the toughest domains for emerging artists – access to money.

Projects large and small get to their next level through Kickstarter, which creatives types used to raise nearly $100 million in 2011. Nashville, not surprisingly, is well represented, with more than 60 active projects at the start of May. Most involve musicians, but potential contributors also have options in film, photography, dance and book publishing.

Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing deal. Projects set their own goals and get funded only if they meet their goals. Not all projects hit the target, but consensus is emerging on best practices for a successful campaign.

Our top five tips:

1. Make an Epic Video

By “epic” we don’t mean endless. Hire a pro or a very talented friend, kick around ideas and keep it under 2 minutes. Most businesspeople understand they must spend money to make money, and artists eyeing Kickstarter with any money at all should spend some here. Kickstarter provides its own pointers for making an awesome video.

2. Create Common-Sense Rewards

Don’t make complicated rewards systems but use a personal touch. Take Houston, Texas, artist Savannah Berry. When The Sheep designed Savannah’s new website, we gave her Kickstarter campaign prominent home-page real estate. She met her goal, raising $10,000 to release her first album, with rewards packages that included a $15 pre-sale of the CD itself and personal in-home concerts for $1,000 donors.

3. Reach Out to Backers and Bloggers

Write personal emails to keep contributors up-to-date and consider a special page with content just for them. Find bloggers – both industry and geographic – who can highlight your story. People love a good story….

4. Nail Down the Story

People love a good story, especially when it is about other people. Craft a narrative that shows passion, personality and potential. Use versions of the narrative in your video, Kickstarter written content and email pitches.

5. Devote Time to Fundraising

Post a project and backers will find it, right? Rarely. Set aside a set number of hours a day or week and make fundraising your job. Research similar projects and what made them succeed. Perfect your email and elevator pitches and use them.

Ultimately, Kickstarter is about building relationships as much as it is about raising money. Contributors want to be involved with helping make something unique, and in creating more intimate relationships, Kickstarter crushes traditional barriers between artists and patrons. The Sheep applaud this, for we love working with self-starters but aren’t too big on barriers of any kind.

If you’re a front end designer or a social media guru and you’re passionate about your craft too, you might just be a fit for our open freelance positions.

See, the thing is: nobody has an official Playbook.

The social media landscape is changing so rapidly that what was hot just five years ago (MySpace) is already passé, and new services that weren’t even a blip then (Pinterest) can now play key parts of an integrated marketing plan. And the social web is continuing to change how we consume, share and experience music.

It’s not quite the Wild West – we’re past the stage where we take random shots and hope something hits – but nobody has it down to a neat little packagable, re-creatable formula yet either.

So what did we learn from 5 panels and 3 talks?

Well, we learned that music sales in general might finally be stabilizing and that digital music sales are still on the up-tick.

We learned that while yes, social media is important, Radio remains the number one place where people discover new music (followed by the recommendations of friends) (@npdgroup).

We learned that metrics are critical, but only if you are considering the information and actually using it to inform decisions and create strategy. Trial and error is the only way to evaluate new technologies, but if you’re just experimenting without analyzing, you’re not learning anything.

And we were reminded that Social Media platforms and strategies are not one-size fits all. You have to be aware of both the medium and the audience and adjust your content or promotion accordingly. Where an artist is in his/her career also has to drive the decision making process; an artist who is in an early growth phase is different than an established artist in terms of what will be successful.

The 3 biggest takeaways?

Take a day, fill a room with some of the smartest, most creative people in the industry, and you’re bound to leave with some big ideas. But there were a few things that really struck a chord:

Authenticity has to be at the heart of social interactions

It was probably said best during the interview with Sugarland’s Kristian Bush (@kristianbush), but it was a sentiment that was echoed again and again throughout the day:

Be Authentic

Whether you’re an artist or a team acting on behalf of an artist, be authentic in your interactions: share the stories that you are passionate about, that are relevant, and that are interesting.

Be a story-teller (or hire one) and tell a compelling story.

Do this not just because people can smell marketing-speak a mile away, but more importantly, because it’s the only way to build genuine relationships (this is true in business, as well).

It’s also the only way that social media is substainable over the long haul that’s required to get a real return on your efforts. You can’t fake it or manufacture it forever.

Social Media is a commitment

Though maybe it’s not the way it should be, or the way it will be in 10 years, the fact is that, right now, the music industry is event driven.

The next tour. The next single release. The next album launch.

It’s OK to plan your marketing strategy around these events, but the real win comes when you can fill the gaps with meaningful interactions (what you ate for breakfast on the tour bus probably does not count, nor does repeated reminders to pick up your album that came out 8 months ago) and then do it year after year… after year. Even when it isn’t fun, or convenient, or easy.

In the real world, you don’t build trust without regular communication and you can’t keep a friendship alive if you never call or write.

The online world isn’t any different.

Selling songs/albums might not be the point anymore

These days, you’re more likely to tune into Pandora on your iPhone or Spotify on your desktop than put in a CD while you’re at work or at home.

These subscription services, and to a lesser extent, sites like SoundCloud and YouTube, are changing the way we consume music. When you can subscribe to a service and instantly have every song imaginable available at your finger tips… what’s the point of buying a CD, digital or otherwise?

So if music stops becoming a product – if it instead becomes a vehicle for artist discovery, or artist promotion – how do we continue to compensate artists (and the industry that orbits them) for their work and thus allow them to keep creating?

Sites like KickStarter are probably part of the equation, but there’s also this:

It seems like social media has made us feel like we’re a little closer to our favorite artists and has allowed us to claim a small piece of the Experience of creating music as our own.

So it makes sense that packaging that Experience up as product is where we’ll go next. Concert tickets, apparel, special edition LPs, unique posters, and exclusive artist access have always been secondary to music sales, but they have enormous potential to be real sources of revenue. The artists and organizations who are smart enough to start finding new ways to sell the Experience combined with the music will have real successes here.

And yes, social media can help drive sales of all these things, but you have to first build a real following of legitimate fans in order to do it successfully.

What’s Next

The day closed out with a panel talking about the future of social media. There’s a lot to be excited about: more social platforms and apps are launching every day, each presenting new opportunities to be seen and heard if utilized correctly. Mobile devices and tablets are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and creating a new ways to interact. And all the while, we’re getting better at developing promotions that work, and connect with fans.

But I think the most exciting thing about the future of social media and the music industry is this: we don’t have it all figured out yet.

And that means the some of the biggest successes and the best ideas are still out there just waiting to be discovered.

Follow #lmds2012 on Twitter for more insights on Leadership Music Digital Summit 2012

From 0-60 in 5.6 seconds

When you look at a luxury car like a Tesla, you can immediately tell it’s built with superior components and craftmanship: higher end engine parts, leather interior, quality sound system, and a hundred other factors both big and small. And if you go to purchase one, you’ll likely be treated to a superior buying experience that extends to the customer service you receive even after you’re completed the sale.

There’s also a lot of work that goes into producing a Tesla that you’ll never even see; thousands of hours spent by engineering and design teams that have combed over every mechanical and aesthetic detail of the car to produce the final result that you see on a showroom floor.

The price tag is steep, but what you’re paying for is a superior product, superior experience, and a car that is incredibly fun to drive.

High end websites aren’t so different.

They might include a half-dozen tangible components such as custom programming, e-commerce integration, mobile compatibility, branding, multiple design revisions, copy writing, social media integration, mailing lists and SEO.

But there’s just as many components are less tangible and tougher to quantify: goal analysis, competitive research, testing, UI design, design detail, client education, and the sheer number of hours that’s involved in taking the project from start to finish.

All these factors go into creating a website that is as much a luxury product as a Tesla. And so it shouldn’t be surprising that you pay a premium for it.

On the other hand…

Most of us can’t afford a Tesla, but unless we have no alternative, we generally stay away from shady-looking dealerships advertising cars for under $1,000. Sure, a car from Cars-2-Go will usually get you where you want to go… for a while at least. And a cheap or free website usually gets you an online presence.

Sort of.

But will it do what you want and need? Will it continue to run like a fine-tuned machine? Is it a joy to use?

A bargain site will never truly showcase your talent, product or personality. Cheaping out with a template or DIY site means little or no customization, basic if any search engine optimization, and poorly integrated social media. And forget about having someone there to help you if the site breaks down or needs a tune-up.

All that intangible stuff that goes into engineering a Tesla or even moderately priced website is even harder to appreciate – because it just isn’t there.

If the site ever had that new-car smell, it will fade. Quickly.

Toyotas are Still Good Cars

But between Teslas and the bargain buys off a sketchy car lot are a ton of vehicles along many price points. Toyotas, for example, are stylish cars with tons of options for new buyers to choose from.

At NoSleepForSheep, we love options.

We really love creating websites with features that do exactly what our clients need. We are not an off-the-rack shop because we want each artist, entrepreneur and company we work with to get both a fabulous site and exemplary service – including personal attention that does not end when the site is launched.

You won’t get that with even the best “cheap site”. The Sheep build sites that do. Think of us as the Toyota-builders of website development and design. And yes, the sweet Tesla-level upgrade is available, too.

Your Website is an Investment

We know, justifying the cost of more than a few hundred bucks for a website can be tough. In the past, as long as you actually had a presence on the Internet, you were generally ahead of your competition. But those days are gone.

Today, your website is the front line of your business or brand: chances are, except in the case of direct referrals (and sometimes even then), your website will meet your new customers and fans before you do. What will they find?

If your site is built properly, if you leverage social media correctly, if you write about what you do regularly and in an engaging fashion, potential customers will find the information and good vibes that make them want to know more.

Isn’t that worth the investment?

So check out this list and get your calendar booked:

Saturday March 3st, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center

Now in it’s third year, the theme of this year’s TedxNasville is “Impact — Making a Difference”. If you’ve never attended a Ted event before, you can check out videos of past events to get a sense of the experience.

NOTE: Tickets are $55.10 and in danger of selling out quickly. Get them now.

Saturday April 14th, at Cadillac Ranch

Now in it’s fifth year, PodCamp is the official un-conference for all types of individuals involved in digital media. With a wide range of sessions from local leaders, you’ll walk out of the event having learned something new, whether you’re a beginner or a novice.

NOTE: Attendance is free, but you still need to register online.

Saturday April 21st, 9am – 4pm at Watkins College. 

We’re proud to be a part of the leadership team bringing the first official WordCamp Event to Nashville. This one-day event features a total of 12 different sessions divided into two different learning tracks: beginner and advanced. So whether you are a casual user of WordPress for your business or blog, or a designer/developer power user, you will find a full day jammed packed with some great learning opportunities from really good speakers.

NOTE: $20 per ticket, register online. Limited number of tickets available.

Wednesday April 25th, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center

NoSleepForSheep is sponsoring the 2012 Leadership Music Digital Summit, an event that – this year – is focusing on the intersection of the music industry and social media. If you’re involved in the music industry and the digital space, this is one event you don’t want to miss: the speakers list is still being finalized, but the preview of the schedule looks like it will be a great day.

NOTE: Registration is $249.00 if purchased in advance, $499 on the day of the event.

Last week, Mumford & Sons played a three night stint at Nashville’s church of music, the Ryman. Tickets for all dates sold out in less than an hour (to people from all over the country, it turns out),  so snagging a single for Wednesday night turned out to be a pretty impressive feat.

Tuesday’s night show was an uneven experience: there were missed lyrics, a coughing fit that turned into a 10 minute break while Marcus had to head off stage to upchuck, and then no encore. Later, it was chalked up to nerves and not having performed much since last on tour in 2011.

But by Wednesday night, when I was in attendance, the performance was flawless and packed with old favorites and teases of the new album. The floors shook with the foot stomping of a packed audience and then went silent when the band did an acoustic version of Sisters. The encore was back, and the show closed to riotous applause.

Yeah, this is what the music industry is about.

Why, How and When to Hire Your First Hire from FreshBooks on Vimeo.

Even though it shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, what with his sudden resignation just a few weeks before, I was still struck with a sense of profound loss and sadness. It reminded me of how I felt right when I heard that Douglas Adams had died years earlier. Here again was someone with such an unimaginable breadth of talent and vision, someone who was still contributing in a such an enormous way, gone, long before they should have been. There is an element of disbelief. Why do we so often lose the best people?

I bought my first MacBook Pro a few days ago. It arrives today.

I had been towing the line on Apple for years: I’ve owned a few generations of iPods and Nanos, love my iPhone and iPad, but I have stoically remained committed to my PC. Most places I’ve worked have used them, and macs have always have seemed so insanely expensive when I’m prepared to upgrade. But when you get right down to it, I’m really a Mac type of person: I love design and usability and products that look and work beautifully.

I didn’t buy the MacBook because Steve Jobs died. There was a handful of other reasons, like: we’re about to delve into some app development, and you really need a mac to get into things like that. And I’m tired of toting around a 9lb notebook when I travel overseas. But I still think that for a little while, every time I’ll use it, I’ll think of the man behind it.

There’s a video of Steve Jobs that’s been making the rounds lately. It’s his Stanford Commencement Address from 2005 and for some reason, it’s just now that I’ve sat down and watched it in full. If you haven’t yet, I’ve included it below, and you should stop reading this and go watch that. Then come back.

There’s a lot of good advice packed into those 15 minutes. But the part I love the most comes near the end:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

There were a lot of reasons why I started NoSleepForSheep – some selfish, some more altruistic. But mostly, it was about finally doing the things I am most passionate about, and using my skills to arm others – creatives, small business owners, crazy startups and dreamers – with the tools they need to be able to follow their passion.

When your job is your passion, it stops being work. And that’s when you can change the world.

So long Steve Jobs, you will be missed.

In many ways, the update has turned the SEO industry on it’s head, but it has also leveled the playing field: creating opportunities for small businesses, companies and brands who build quality websites and generate loyal and vocal fan followings to rank higher.

Google Panda

Why Panda?

At the core, the goal of the new upgrade was two-fold:

1. Devalue the rankings of low-quality sites and kill off content farms who have managed to build relevance by taking advantage of how the system works.

2. Increase the rankings of high-quality and local web sites by judging relevance based on factors that are less easily manipulated, like the “likability” of a site by influencers and metrics like time on site.

So… What’s that Mean, Exactly?

Google’s mission is simple: provide relevant search results for people.

With millions of web pages spread across the globe and millions of people searching daily for billions of things, this is a TALL order. To deliver relevant results, Google’s programming must be able to tell which online content relates best to the search terms entered.

Previously, it did this in a couple of different ways:

1. By looking at on-page content like meta titles, meta description, page titles.
   The more relevant these were to a particular keyword, the higher you would rank for it.
2. By judging the quantity of and quality of inbound links
   If your website was all about selling t-shirts and someone else linked to you with the anchor text ‘Nashville t-shirts,’ then it was easy for Google to get that your website was a Nashville t-shirt website. Often referred to as “backlinks”, this one was a core deliverable of the SEO industry and the single best way to build “authority” for a site.
3. By relying on Page Rank
   Each backlink counted as vote for a page (with backlinks from more relevant sites counting for more) and these votes helped make up the Page Rank of a site. This metric helped Google assign a numeric value to sites and then layer them by relatively.

For years, this formula worked amazingly well, but eventually people learned enough about how the system worked that they were able to tweak websites to jump ahead in the rankings.

As a result, the top results weren’t necessarily the sites with the best content anymore; they were just the ones that had done the best job exploiting the system.

Introduce Panda

With the rise of social media as curator of engaging, valuable content, and the increasing difficulty of accurately determining high quality sites, Google realized that it needed to make some big changes.

Enter Panda.

Utilizing machine learning, Panda looks at pages on a site and mimics how people would react to them to gage the quality of the entire site. It’s a human filter, designed to place higher value on what actual users think of a site than other incoming signals which can be easily faked.

It gets technical, but all you really need to remember is that while all the old factors still count, new ones now play a much more important role:

Social Mentions (especially Google’s own new Plus service) count more than they have in the past. The more times real people retweet, +1, like or share your online content the higher it ranks.

Overall design and UI matters; sites that feel overally “spammy” (with high ad to content ratio, or with lack of real content above the fold, or with empty pages) are now penalized across the board.

Preference is given to websites that publish high quality, original content on an ongoing basis. Google may also be integrating additional metrics like time on site and bounce rate, so building engaging, quality pages is even more important.

What Panda Means for You and Your Site

The bottom line is that winning the search engine optimization game isn’t just about backlinks and buying traffic anymore, it’s about taking a holistic approach to crafting your entire online presence.

If you’re designing or redesigning your site; you should be thinking about building it on an platform like WordPress that makes generating new content easy and has tools that play well with Google.

You should also be prepared to create an ongoing strategy for generating new content on a regular basis and growing and engaging your social media networks. If you don’t have a wordpress website with an integrated blog, now is the time to launch one.

Need help? Talk to us about building your new site and how we can help with ongoing digital marketing. You might be surprised at how easy it can be to take advantage of these changes and drive results for your business!

Learn More:

- Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- More Information on Building High Quality Sites (from Google)

Nashville is on the map as Music City, USA, but folks are often surprised to learn we also have a large and vibrant digital/entrepreneurial community. Nowhere is that more apparent than during Nashville’s version of the very un-corporate, un-conference, event: BarCamp Nashville.

For the uninformed, BarCamp Nashville is a FREE one day event which features some of the best planned and unplanned sessions about marketing, design, development, business and creativity. It’s a learning event, but it’s also a networking event with many of the best and the brightest in Nashville’s tech and business communities in attendance.

And it’s all held at Cadillac Ranch in downtown Nashville.

This will be our second year attending, which makes us seasoned veterans, right? So as such, we wanted to share some tips for getting the most out of YOUR BCN11 experience (whether it’s your first time attending or not).

Plan your day, but be prepared to throw the plan out

The official Sessions List has been whittled down from 80+ to just over 30, covering a wide spectrum of topics. Now is the time to sign up for the ones you’re interested in so you have an idea of what you don’t want to miss the day of the event (and so the Barcamp planners can organize the logistics of everything).

Chances are, you’ll still have to choose favorites (because some of your picks will have overlapping times), so here’s a few tips to dealing with the schedule:

• Don’t be afraid to walk out of a session if you aren’t getting value out of it. Really. There is no benefit to hanging around if you aren’t learning something new or aren’t enjoying the presentation. Do it politely and ninja-quiet-like, but duck out if you need to and spend the time checking out a different session instead (so maybe have a couple of second choices).
• Don’t book your whole day solid, because the learning doesn’t happen just in the sessions. There’s plenty of seating in the bar area and it’s a great chance to sit down, catch you breath, and mingle with other folks who are taking a time out.
• Remember, there’s impromptu sessions throughout the day. You never know what might pop up, so check the boards (and listen the announcements) to see what’s happening during the day.

Have conversations with people

Not a naturally outgoing person, just the word “networking” makes me cringe a little bit inside. At 2010′s BarCamp I spent most of my time chatting with people I already knew, but I did make the effort to hand out cards and have conversations with a few complete strangers. The nice thing about Barcamp is that you’re dealing with a large population of tech people who, in large part, have the same aversion to networking that you do.

Hey, instant conversation starter.

See, the thing is, Barcamp really is about meeting new people in the Nashville community who are just as passionate about design, marketing, development and new business as you are.

It’s about developing new relationships and having the types of conversations that might just spark your next great idea.

Don’t forget the logistics

Last year, I came armed with a laptop, ipad, iphone, notepad, an assortment of writing instruments, and business cards. Yes, the backpack I toted around was REALLY heavy because, no, I don’t have a 1lb Macbook Air and yes, it was overkill.

This time, I’ll be keeping it simple with just my iphone and a notepad to jot down the things that really resonate. Unless you’re planning on live blogging the whole event, you’ll probably be OK with less rather than more, and you’ll have an easier time moving through the crowds.

Arrive early, take business cards, take your passion, and remember, parking isn’t free.

Ready, Set, Go…

Follow @barcampnash for the latest information leading up to the event and follow The Sheep @nosleepforsheep. If you see us at the event, stop and say hi, we’d love to meet you!