I'm getting ready to head down to We Media Miami 2010, where Genuine Interactive is a media sponsor this year. As the former web producer for the conference and someone who has attended/worked every one of them since the beginning, there are a lot of reasons why I am drawn to this event. It's eye-opening, thought-provoking and best of all, it provides a glimpse of the future reality that we will all be living in. But that would take too long to fully explain.

Instead, I made a Wordle that lists the sessions, speakers and sponsors of this year's event (click the thumbnail for the larger version).

If you have any requests or comments, email me at chad AT genuineinteractive DOT com, comment here, or @reply to @wearegenuine.

Be sure to follow the #WeMedia hashtag between March 9-11. It's gonna be HUGE. But don't take my word for it. Look at these screengrabs from the two days of the conference last year. At its peak each day, #WeMedia was only competing with Jesus and Apple. 

You can make your own Satan and Microsoft jokes, and of course #iestories had a few of those last year as I recall too.

Much like a patient who is about to undergo an unfamiliar medical procedure, social media can be a scary endeavor to the uninitiated.

In both cases, the mind can easily drift into anxiety-ridden territory: What if something goes wrong? What if I hear something I didn't want to hear? What if the people operating these instruments are not up to the task? (click here to read the full post)

Last week, Josh Hoekwater (a.k.a. @digitalhoek) and I gave a talk to the New England Conservatory titled "Web Site Basics: Tips for Do-It-Yourselfers"

We weren't totally sure what to expect in terms of the audience, but we did some prep work that covered a variety of areas including hosting, domains, blogs, social media and metrics. The SlideShare version of our PowerPoint is listed below:

In the process of preparing for this, I reached out so some friends and colleagues and got some great insights from a couple musicians and a promoter who are committed to their web presence.

• Montreal-native Chris Velan has released a few solo albums, including his latest Solidago.
• Lou Paniccia is the drummer for a band that’s “just getting started” called Oranjuly. 
• Justin Poirier, a video editor at here at Genuine Interactive, plays guitar for The Hollow Sound.
• Roman Lojko, an HTML wiz at Genuine who "eats chunks of CSS for breakfast" during the day then books, promotes and writes about music at night, runs the web site undressmerobot.com/hmsputnam
• Mike Norman, Genuine’s Director of development, is a guitarist for the band Action Verbs.

I first met Chris online, kind of. During a business trip, I had a free night with nothing to do, and found a listing of musicians playing local bars. I Googled Chris, found his site, listened to some of his music and enjoyed the show in front of a very small crowd because the gig was added very last-minute on a weeknight. I've seen him several times since and am a big fan of his music. What impressed me from the beginning, aside from his music, was how he set himself up for success by already having a robust web presence.

I met Rob through a friend of a friend who used to work with him down the hallway from us at SonicBids.com. (Disclosure: Sonic Bids is a current client of Genuine).

:: What were your goals for your first web site? What are they now? What changed and why?

CHRIS VELAN: My goals for my first website (in 2003) were drastically different than they are now. Then, it was just about getting all of the info and media up on the site in a presentable, cool, well-navigable fashion and that was it. There was not much consideration for making the site dynamic, changing, interactive, etc. Updates to the site were in the hands of the all-knowing web-master. Now it's all about having the Facebook and Twitter feeds on the home page and making sure that I can change, update content as easily as possible. My site www.chrisvelan.com is built on a Word Press platform. I find it works really well.

What changed? A couple of things. The meteoric rise of social networks, the corresponding need for constantly-updated media and a general expectation in the music industry that artists need to foster a close ongoing relationship with fans.

JUSTIN POIRIER: For my band, The Hollow Sound, our first website was a way of creating awareness for the band, and providing an outlet for any and all information about us, that anyone would want to know. While being somewhat self indulgent, it gave us a chance to talk about some of the questions that potential fans might have wanted to ask. We also used it as a place for fans to download our first ep for free.

MIKE NORMAN: We had a MySpace page, because every other band had to have one. We played follow the leader. When it came time, we realized we needed to grow beyond MySpace due to the indicators that MySpace is losing market share and that the market place there is just flooded with bands befriending everyone. While we created a Facebook page (that is actually the best communication tool we have), we didn’t want that to also be the same problem 2 years down the road so we created our own website where we have complete control. And we keep our MySpace page, but message it clearly that the users should visit our actual web site.

ROMAN LOJKO: My friend and I initially just wanted to share the music we loved with other people via internet radio. Eventually, since circumstances changed and we weren’t able to stream music anymore, our website turned into a music webzine, where we tried to give exposure to bands that we thought were overlooked or unjustly ripped apart by other webzines.

:: How do you activate and engage your audience, create a connection with them that extends beyond the music your performing, essentially give them a window into your musical soul?

CHRIS VELAN: It's really about maintaining an active presence on all of your social media sites AND being genuine, consistent, and honest in your postings/outreach. By doing that, you will attract the people you're meant to. You have to consider that a fan is not someone to be manipulated. They're you. The edict, "treat others as you wish to be treated" applies.

Don't be the artist/person you think you should be or think they want you to be. Be yourself.

But be ACTIVE as yourself.

LOU PANICCIA: We post videos of warming up backstage before a gig, or tweet about what we’re listening to in the van on the way to a gig. I don’t see our online content as a way to let people see more about the music as much as I see it as a way for our fans to get to know a bit more about our personalities and what it’s like to be a band on the run.

JUSTIN POIRIER: Currently we take advantage of all the major social networking tools, we have a MySpace with over 20,000 friends (although that is becoming less and less relevant every day), we have a Facebook with over 500 friends, we have individual Twitter accounts as well as a band twitter account, as well as YouTube and Vimeo video channels.

One of the recent things that we did was we began to set up a series of acoustic covers where we asked fans what songs they wanted to hear us do acoustic. We got through two of them before we got distracted, but we've currently got about 6 more songs that we are ready to film and post weekly.

Other than twitter, we try to update our videos on YouTube as much as possible. Any time we go into the studio or on tour we always bring a camera and piece together some tour or studio diaries to give the fan's an insight into our personalities and give them a feeling of being connected to us beyond just listening to our music.

MIKE NORMAN: We use Facebook, Twitter, and the website all integrated together to keep engage our fans, as well as online streaming tools like ReverbNation. We make sure we post a couple of times a week to keep our name in people’s minds. We thank everyone that ever mentions us on Facebook or plays us on the radio to curry favor. As for the giving people a window into our musical souls: that’s not our goal. I dear say that’s the goal of people who have far too much ego in their music.

ROMAN LOJKO: Some artists keep engaging web journals or tour diaries active, and that generates a lot of interest. Some notable examples:

-Troels Abrahmson, a Danish electronic artist, shares all of his deep emotions and thoughts in his weblog: http://supertroels.dk/. For whatever reason his fans love it, and even share comments to almost all of his posts.

-The band Candy Claws actually had an “online world tour” where they went around cities and videotaped stripped down versions of their songs through a blog in each city they were in: http://www.candyclaws.blogspot.com. Everything was posted on their blog and each blog they hit and they definitely generated a lot of interest that way.

:: What tools in the digital toolbox work particularly well for artists to connect with their audience?

CHRIS VELAN: I'm using my iPhone more and more for just about everything. The touring artist is always on the move and needs things to be portable, easy and quick.

I don't have the new 3G phone so I can't yet do video (but I will soon).

I take all my photos on my iPhone (using various photo apps) and do most of my tweeting, Facebook updates, etc on it.

It's a crucial tool for me.

LOU PANICCIA: Profiles on MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook are what connect us to fans. We use our website as a central starting point to direct the fan to the network they want to use to connect with us. Then we use tools like BandCamp, ArtistData, and WordPress to push content from our website to the social networks and vice versa.

JUSTIN POIRIER: Social networking is huge, but it is also completely over saturated. MySpace, which is the leading website for bands, is currently a virtual ghost town for fans, and each fan is constantly bombarded by bands looking for fans. The most effective outlet for breaking bands right now seems to be blogs, if a band can really blow up on a blog, then they can likely draw more attention to themselves from fans that trust that blog. In the punk scene the biggest blog is Absolutepunk.net and in the indie scene it's Pitchfork.com, but if a band can get a number of people from those blogs behind them, they can really widen their fan base.

There is also digital music streaming and selling. If a band does not have their music up online somewhere to be streamed for free, they are not going to get booked and they are not going to get fans, end of story. The process of putting music on iTunes is easier than ever. We currently use a service called Tunecore and have our music up for sale on a number of different sites. Not only does this potentially widen your fan base, but it also gives bands a certain amount of credibility when they can be found easily online. Currently when you look up "The Hollow Sound" on Google our MySpace is the first thing that comes up.

ROMAN LOJKO: Following and connecting with music blogs is by far the most advantageous way a band can achieve early recognition. Blogs are run by people who love music with all their hearts, and they are almost all connected to other people who showcase music locally. These people will do anything to get other people to love the bands they love, and they play a huge part in creating underground global musical “scenes,” which are much more powerful and influential than individual bands.

:: Other than yourself, do you know of any artists - musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, etc. who do a great job using digital tools to create deeper connections with their audience?

LOU PANICCIA: John Hodgman (I’m a PC) actually does really great things with his audience on Twitter http://twitter.com/HODGMAN. I’ve seen several trending topics on Twitter that started with him and his fans (#starwarsbandnames was a personal favorite).

JUSTIN POIRIER: There are certainly a number of people that have used Twitter very successfully to market themselves. Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 comes to mind, as well as John Mayer, but the key that I have seen is consistently delivering high quality or interesting content. One of the more interesting marketing campaign for bands that I have seen lately was by a band who streamed their whole new CD for free but with a different blog sponsoring each song. Another band, had all of their songs for free download, but each song had a commercial for DW drums at the beginning, not only are these good ways to cross market but they are ways for bands to still make money and drum up support.

ROMAN LOJKO: There’s a growing movement of underground, lo-fi musicians that release everything they make free on the internet. By embracing the internet’s functions they gain much more recognition than they ever would otherwise, and their fans respect them for it. They take away the “illegal downloading guilt” most people feel (at least on some level), and make music wholesome once more. If their music is actually decent then when they tour around they have small fan bases everywhere they can make use of, and they didn’t have to pay a cent to get their names out there.

I love my job. And some days, I love my job even more than other days. Today is one of those days.

What is it I'm doing? I'm writing about love. Well, kinda. I'm writing about Valentine's Day, and even more to the point, I'm writing about Sweethearts.

Necco Sweethearts. In virtual form.

I have been a very, very, very small part of the team that built the app and web site that enables users to send virtual NECCO sweethearts to others via Twitter, and I should point out, as well as via email.

As the so-called "Social Media Guru" at Genuine (I prefer "Social Media Enabler" because that's really what it's all about), I had the fun task of pondering various Twitter-ish aspects of the project and then seeing our talented team bring it to life.

But I became obsessed. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted to find ways to mine the data. As of this writing we have thousands of Sweetheart boxes created, and I read them all.

As we prepare for our final descent into Valentine's Day (sorry, I'm writing on a plane) I thought it would be fun to share some various approaches people took in creating different types of Sweetheart boxes. Some were funny. Some tried to be funny, but failed. Some reflected frustration, bitterness, or profound sadness. Many were amazingly sweet, if rather cliché and corny. And a few made me stop in my tracks and read them multiple times to make sure I understood what they were trying to say in less than 20 characters.

With Twitter, some people are still getting their heads around how anyone could say anything of note in 140 characters. If tweeting   can be likened to a traditional workout, then what some of the creators of Sweetheart boxes achieved was like training in the thinner air of the mountains.

Some, like emilazy's were decidedly anti-Valentine's Day, and others like kateybella and Puregirlblue, were giving would-be admirers a Valentine's Day stiff-arm.

Some used virtual Sweethearts boxes to express their fandom. Fallout Boy (illbecavalier), the sport of tennis (ToxicTourniquet) and the New Kids on The Block (DWSluttyLoVR and catnappen) all received some virtual NECCO love. Meantime, others (VGcom) used the service to promote an upcoming Vince Gill album.

Another reason I love being here is that the feeling is mutual. Our founder and creative director, Chris "BALD IS BOOTYFUL" Pape demonstrated that with his own Sweethearts box.

A fan of the show 30 Rock (brigidmarie) chimed in with "LETS NOT LEMON THIS." I read this one while 30 Rock was actually playing on my flight. Eerie.

Some, like those of kerbygoff and theriotisover, took more of a political/activist stance.

And some just made me do a doubletake. Katryna_is_me (YOU ARE MY VICODIN :D) and lisalarosa (LOVE IS: SPONGY) made me think, but those were nothing compared to the nickname (MCMUFFIN PANTS) I learned from unbereft.

Have a happy, goofy, funny Valentine's Day, both in the real and virtual worlds. But whatever you do, don't Lemon it!

Twitter + iPhone + Micro site = sweet success.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways in 25 characters or less. 25 characters is the new 140 characters for this sweet NECCO Sweethearts iphone and Twitter app we created.

Download the free iphone app to customize the famous NECCO Sweethearts with your own message on up to five hearts. Your custom box of Sweethearts will be sent to your lover to shake, open, and read your messages of love, lust, or just plain goofiness.

Also, this is a very unique application in that there is an integration with Twitter that allows users to display or deliver their boxes of custom Sweethearts to their followers. Our goal was to create a cross channel social media promotion that also had an iPhone tie in. The combination of mediums is a testament to how we try to leverage synergies between all digital opportunities.

The social web is not just Facebook. It's every element of a brand’s digital strategy. Check out what USA Today and Twitter CEO Biz Stone and Mashable - The Social Media Guide think about the app – we sure think it's sweeeet. 

UPDATE:  January 26, 2010 - AdWeek article "Twitter With a Twist" reviews how NECCO Sweethearts iPhone App inspires users to share content in new ways.