One of the funniest and yet brilliant music success stories i’ve seen actually happened to my former flatmate, Lee Kirby.

About 3 years ago, Lee picked up the guitar for the first time and spent hours practising and writing songs. During this period he also started singing songs in Vietnamese, which was not surprising because he loves the Vietnamese culture. This started 7 years earlier when he said he would be the 1st English player to play professional football in Vietnam. He achieved this and since then his love affair began. What WAS a surprise was what happened when he filmed a song and his Vietnamese friend put it on Youtube one friday morning.

She uploaded it to YouTube (Lee didn’t even know), shared it with her friends on facebook and within 48 hours the video received 10,000 views and Lee had over 1000 friend requests. He became an overnight success. Since then (October ’09) he has been interviewed by several publications, there has been interest to book him to perform in several countries and he was asked to record the new year’s message for Vietnam on YouTube by the British ambassader and British embassy for Vietnam. Now to give you an idea of how big this is, Alex Ferguson recorded the message last year.

I wrote a post called “Oh Sh*t” factor and I believe this is one of the reasons why Lee has been so successful in such a short space of time. In the next few weeks I will be doing a full case study on Lee’s journey, how social media made him a success and how it can happen organically.

If you want tips on how this can happen to you then “be lazy” and remember that success leaves clues.

Lee, we at The Worst Kept Secret wish you all the best, and below is the video that started it all without him knowing lol.

Hi everyone

I have been very slack on the blog posting recently but I can assure you that I will be blogging regulary again from…..NOW .

There has been a good reason though and that is because I have been working on my school project. For those who do not know I created and now have implemented the 1st social media course in UK schools, which was linked to GCSE English.

The results were amazing and have seen children get B’s and A’s in some of their coursework. See, social media is not all doom and gloom, which the press love to show.

I even put together a little video.

Social Media Fundamentals Case Study from andrew davis on Vimeo.

Also the TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT featured the course as well.

It has been far from easy but at least one door has been broken down.

Twitter was definitely THE social media network phenomenon of 2009. Both celebrities and us common folk alike got slightly carried away with the fun of being able to randomly announce to our followers what we were doing, as and when we wanted. Whether as a means to occupy us whilst bored at work or on the move using phones, everyone seemed to get the Twitter bug and became addicted to the challenge of communicating in no more than 140 characters!

One of Twitter’s big attractive features was that it bridges the gap between us and celebrities, being a tool  to correspond easily and simply with our favourite artist, band, actor…even Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale from Eastenders is a heavy user with 2134 tweets).  No matter where in the world or how accessible in ‘real life’ the celebrity is, if they’re on Twitter, a connection can be made!

So if we could communicate with them, of course it works vice versa, and some artists have really gone twits for Twitter! With a lot of hype about certain celebrities Twitter user habits (notably Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore getting ridiculously excited about Susan Boyle or um, how many times has Kanye West been reported dead on Twitter?!) we thought it’d be interesting to see who was really really, no REALLY addicted! Which artist may actually be communicating more electronically than perhaps in real life? Here’s TWKS’ Top 10 Music Personality Twitterholics of The Decade (well it is 2010 now so we thought it’d be cool to add to the exaggerated ‘decade’ hype).

*Tweets recorded as of January 1^st 2010*

10.Collective Soul (collective_soul) 6,708 tweets

This entry is very interesting! As the only non-urban related act in our list, American rock band Collective Soul state in their Twitter bio that ‘WE FOLLOW BACK’ – an incentive to follow them I guess, but they rarely post replies, just status updates every couple of days. In addition to this, their last tweet was on December 30th 2009, is this a warning sign of a serious Twitterholic and now they’re all tweeted out?

9.  Mc Hammer (mchammer) 7,221 tweets

MC Hammer addicted to Twitter? Yes he is! Known for the unforgettable  90s hit ‘U Can’t Touch This’ and the ‘hammer pants’, he has come a long way since and become an Internet mogul, getting involved in TechCrunch40 conferences and co-founding DanceJam.com, and of course being a serial tweeter.

8. Solange Knowles (solangeknowles) 7,545 tweets

US R&B singer Solange Knowles is usually overshadowed by her wonder-sister Beyonce, but not this time! Solange can proudly say that she is way above her sister in the Twitter business…maybe it’s because Beyonce hasn’t got a Twitter account ??

7. Soulja Boy (souljaboytellem) 10,138 tweets

American rapper Soulja Boy is definitely a Twitterholic that uses his account to show his followers (almost 2 million!) how much he loves them, often replying back to them…maybe he should change his name to Soulja Boy Tweet Em??

6.  Donnie Wahlberg (DonnieWahlberg) 12, 267 tweets

One fifth of the newly reunited New Kids On The Block and movie actor, you’d wonder how Donnie would have time to tweet so much? But he does, and often likes to go on mass ‘twugs’ (that’s a ‘twitter hug’) and reply to his fans with the word ‘Love’, is that a sign of the boyband romantic coming out?

5. Questlove  (questlove) 12, 276 tweets

It seems that Questlove definitely can’t keep his hands still, if he’s not drumming with hip-hop group The Roots, mixing on the decks as a DJ and music producer, then he’s on Twitter! A very busy man indeed, being on over 5,000 Twitter lists, and often tweeting about the little time there is to sleep, but there’s still always time to tweet!

4. Wyclef Jean (Wyclef) 12,426 tweets

Multiplatinum rapper and producer Wyclef’s status updates are mostly inspirational comments – you’ll find this amongst his many retweets, as it seems has a serious Twitter habit of hitting that Retweet button!

3. Noreaga (noreaga) 13, 135 tweets

Known for his lyrics and use of words, rapper Noreaga can chat, or rather tweet a lot (some days, over 100 tweets!)  - ironically though, most of his replies are often very very short!

2. Estelle  (EstelleDarlings) 14,741 tweets

Grammy Award winning Londoner Estelle seems to busy herself with Twitter on the daily, unlike the other Twitterholics on our list, she’s often in conversation with big names in the urban music industry on both sides of the Atlantic and it appears not as much to her fans. Well if you know the big names….

1. Beverley Knight  (Beverleyknight) 20,538 tweets

British Soul and R&B songstress Beverley Knight is THE Twitterholic storming past number 2 on our list, Estelle with over 20,000 tweets! Posting easily over 20 tweets a day and sometimes that’s between Breakfast and Lunch only, Beverley is very much in a league of her own when it comes Twittering! But like several of the other artists in our list, she uses Twitter to show her appreciation to her fans, replying to everyone as ‘luv’ and ending her tweets with lots of xxxxxx, ahhh, isn’t that nice!

The list has been compiled after researching almost 200 of the most popular music personalities on Twitter worldwide (all verified accounts), did you expect these artists to be in the Top 10? Is there someone we’re missing? Then please let us know and leave us a comment…and of course, go ahead and Retweet this to all your followers too!

The last half of the naughties saw a lot of growing trends; availability of Broadband on a large scale, online video growth went through the roof, connecting to friends/acquantances became easier and the gap between an unreachable celeb to the common folk decreased due to the likes of MySpace & Facebook.  However with the good, always comes the bad – and they can trend too! One in particular has been the rise of the Internet Gangster.

Urban Dictionary describes these “hoodlums” as: “One who uses the internet as a front for acting like a tough guy gang member, usually because they are hoping to gain the respect that they lack in their real life”.

If you type in ‘Internet Gangster’ into Youtube you will see some great examples and spoofs. However, unlike in the films where you meet them alone, in a dark alley type of way, the Internet Gangster’s favourite haunt is the Comment Section – a place for all to see.   They can be quite nasty and any musician that has had some consistant success will no doubt have come across this.  But in a situation like this, what are you to do?  Ok, it is damn near impossible to control what they say but you usually have 3 choices when dealing with these pests:

1. Ignore them and hopefully they will find the next victim.
2. Start fighting back, which could potentially lead to them bringing in other (Internet) gang members and making your time online pretty unpleasant. Dont forget you have a life outside of a laptop (Or phone and video console now its 2010), they don’t.
3. Have other people fight your battles. A way to do this is building up your network over time and have rapport with your true fans. What you will find is that fans will stand up against people who are unneccesarily unpleasant to you. Good can be triumphant

I like choice 3 as you get to ignore them (Choice 1), while at the same time fighting against them in numbers (Choice 2).
All of a sudden, you become a force and a real problem to some!

But, and there’s always another BUT, let’s go beyond thinking about street gangsters and hoodlums and refer to the classics like The Godfather.  The main man running it all, and who has the REAL power (that would be you is you choose Choice 3)….is usually the top Gangster, which then leads to the question “Who really is the Internet Gangster?”. Is it the kids who, like one of my favourite battle rappers “Illmaculate” said: “With beef they’re the type to resolve that/by banging on keyboards and typing in ALL CAPS” OR the artist who stays silent and lets his team fight his battle? Hmmmm, food for thought. What do you think?

If you want to know more about building a powerful network then please check out chapter 3 (Your Network = your networth) of my free ebook; 10 Commandments of Music and Social Media.

If you have been living under a rock this Christmas or don’t live in the UK, then you must have been aware of the Xmas battle for Number 1 in the charts: X Factor’s Joe McElderry Vs Rage Against The Machine (RATM). It’s no secret that the power of Facebook made RATM victory, so here at The Worst Kept Secret we took it upon ourselves to have a bit of fun and see what TV reality music stars have the largest presence on Social Media.

We used the big 4: Facebook & MySpace (Social Networks), Twitter (Micro-blogging) & YouTube (Content Community) to do our research and looked at how many fans, friends, followers and subscribers they have.

Enjoy and please feel free to discuss & let people know the results.

10: Susan Boyle
Facebook (1) Twitter (n/a) Myspace (n/a) YouTube (4)

Britain’s Got Talent’s Queen and cat lover Susan Boyle drops in at number 10 on our list of Talent Based Reality TV Stars and their Social Media platforms. The crazy haired phenomenon tops the Facebook Fan Page with a whopping 1.77 million fans, and the video of her first BGT audition on YouTube has amassed well over 80million views, putting her fourth in our YouTube rankings! That’s enough to make anyone’s hair go wild!

9: Cheryl Cole
Facebook (2) Twitter (11) Myspace (n/a) Youtube (11)

Reality contestant, turned reality Princess with the world at her feet, Cheryl Cole leaps into ninth position on our chart. The rags to riches beauty has 1.5million Facebook fans, and without much of a social media presence or interaction with her community, she still has the power to overthrow governments. Cheryl for Prime Minister!

8. JLS
Facebook (8) Twitter (10) Myspace (18) Youtube (7)

X-Factor runner up’s to Alexander Burke (who doesn’t appear on our ladder), JLS fly into a healthy eighth in the world position, with a strong social media following. Their Facebook Fan Page boosts almost 400,000 followers, but it’s their Twitter page that we are most interested in.
The hunky chaps have almost 80,000 followers and interact nicely with them.

7. Adam Lambert
Facebook (7) Twitter (3) Myspace (11) Youtube (n/a)

American Idol 2009 Runner Up, Adam Lambert climbs into seventh in our chart. The 27-year-old Pop/Rock sensation has almost 300,000 Twitter followers and 400,000 Facebook Fans! At The Worst Kept Secret were not too familiar with his music, but we do think he looks the part for a Twilight movie cameo.

6. David Cook
Facebook (13) Twitter (8) Myspace (10) Youtube (7)

Multi-Talented Musician and winner of American Idol 2008, David Cook is our sixth place social media prince. He is floating about in the digital world on all four of the major networks, with his Myspace game boosting a healthy 187,000 friends and his Twitter with over 85,000.

5. Jordin Sparks
Facebook (22) Twitter (1) Myspace (2) Youtube (8)

In at Number 5 on our Social Media chart is American Idol 2007 winner, Jordin Sparks. Now Sparks’ Facebook page may be slightly below the Susan Boyle’s and Cheryl Cole’s, but it’s her Twitter and YouTube that shows the most life. The 20 year old tops our Twitter list with a mind blowing 435,000 followers, and not only does she have the largest herd of sheep, she also interacts with them well, and has tweeted over 6,300 times!
Jordin Sparks also is up there in our YouTube chart with over 120million views, placing her second to the video queen Leona Lewis!

4. Leona Lewis
Facebook (5) Twitter (n/a) Myspace (4) Youtube (1)

The UK’s most heart-felt voice and X Factor Queen, Leona Lewis is the highest UK artist in our chart. The 2006 X Factor winner is by far and away the Queen of YouTube with an eye watering 230million video views! That’s over 100million more than second place Jordin Sparks. Now while we all love to hear and watch Miss Lewis, her social media statistics elsewhere are extremely impressive also.
Her Facebook Fan Page has over 670,000 and her Myspace page has almost 300,000 friends. Gwan Miss Lewis! Moreover, Leona’s ground breaking first single “Bleeding Love” came in at Number 11 in the best selling singles of the decade!
That’s some ‘bleeding’ pennies for mogul Simon Cowell!

3. David Archuleta
Facebook (10) Twitter (2) Myspace (6) Youtube (6)

As we reach the Top 3, you have to be ready for some seriously alarming statistics. 2008 American Idol Runner-Up, David Archuleta is our highest ranking male artist. The 19 year old Musician rose to fame as a teen sensation on the US Talent show and since then has gone on to sell over a million albums worldwide and build up a strong online fan base. Archuleta’s community features highly across all four networks, with his Twitter showing almost 300,000, his Facebook Fan Page has over 250,000 and his Myspace has over 230,00 friends.
That’s some serious marketing power!

2. Kelly Clarkson
Facebook (6) Twitter (7) Myspace (3) Youtube (3)

The original reality TV Music Queen, an American Idol 2002 winner, in at number two on our chart, is the super talented, Pop/Rock sensation Kelly Clarkson. Although Clarkson doesn’t top any of our individual charts, it’s her consistency across the four major networks that suggest how strong her community fan base is. The Multi Grammy Award Winning artist has a YouTube channel with over 100million views, a Facebook Fan Page with over 530,000, a Twitter page with over 100,000 and a Myspace page with wait for it… over 460,000 friends!
Did someone say Social Media was a fad?

1. Carrie Underwood
Facebook (3) Twitter (6) Myspace (2) Youtube (5)

Top of the pops, Queen of the night, leader of the crusade and lion in the jungle, is an unexpected artist. The winner of our Reality TV within Social Media chart is the 2005 American Idol winner, Carrie Underwood.
Like Kelly Clarkson, Underwood doesn’t feature as a leader of any of our individual Social networking charts, but her concrete Social Media game is of vast proportion. The multi-talented blonde beauty climbs to the top of our chart with an impressive array of statistics.
A Facebook Fan Page with over 800,000 fans, her Twitter has over 130,000 followers, a YouTube channel with over 66million views and a Myspace page with over 630,000 friends.

Well there you have it, the Top 10 Talent Based Reality TV Stars and their Social Media presence. If this proves anything, it is that having a wide variety of fans across your free social networking sites is as important as anything. Imagine how much revenue is generated by having those statistics turned into single and album sales, and you can see the power between Reality TV and Social Media.

As we begin a new year and a new decade, and as Reality TV paints the daily news and with Social Media sharing it, we can only wait in anticipation for the next X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, American Idol, Pop Stars, Pop Idol, Making The Band and Fame Academy style show to dumb down our minds into Simon Cowell and Simon Fullers pockets and bring to the masses the next array of speculative break through talent.

Also if you want to know how you can up your Social Media level and get networks as strong as these guys WITHOUT going on a talent show, then download our free ebook and ecourse: The 10 Commandments of Music and Social Media.

Article by Luca Massaro
Images by Google

Was just sent this great presentation on social media that I wanted to share.

Unfortunately I can’t take any credit for the slideshow, which goes to Marta Kagan, but its a follow up to last year’s ‘What the F**k is Social Media’ and manages to summarise the key opportunities that exist with social networking extremely well – there is a lot of noise out there but this is one of the rare examples where some clear messages leap out from the noise.

Enjoy

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

NMA Opinion Piece

Underneath is what I mentioned above. Big thanks to Nic Howell and NMA for the support.

When I first started working for MySpace in 2006, I could understand why people were saying that social media was a fad and had no intellectual merit as there were only a couple of major players in the game. Three short years later we have some of the biggest websites in the world in the social media camp and there’s now talk of social media being introduced into the classroom. Unfortunately not all of the feedback has been positive – which leaves me puzzled.

Starting this September I’ve created a social media course that will educate pupils as well as teachers and parents in regards to the fundamental areas. It will include: Social networks, social bookmarking, blogging, micro-blogging, Wiki’s and content communities. Using both practical and theoretical methods it will offer a great insight into the growing industry, arming students with the tools to carve out a potential career within the social media realm. Luckily the school I am piloting the course with has a young and fresh approach towards the subject and has included it within their GCSE English coursework, which hopefully will set a trend.

The general consensus from articles that I have read is that people think Twitter will replace English in school, which it will not and I do not think it should. What I do think is that social media can add value to core subjects and give teachers more options in regards to their lesson plans. For example persuasive writing in English Language is a key element when it comes to online editorial and content producing. These two discourses were vital in MySpace/ Lily Allen success story.

Young people are on these social networking sites – that’s a fact. They enjoy these sites and feel comfortable on these sites. Giving them a better understanding of these sites will not only give them another option for an alternative career path but could also potentially help them with a better understanding of their core subjects. I don’t think social media is ready for a curriculum subject this year, but will be very soon. I think we have proved over the last few years that it is not a fad and is here to stay. So if any teachers, parents or local authorities are reading this, please help us engage pupils with Social Media in schools and let us educate everyone involved to change this negative perception. Let’s not follow the music industry vs illegal downloading case study where they were forever fighting a losing battle because they joined the race too late.

I have worked in music and online for over 10 years now and I used to think that it was just this industry where it was not based on talent alone to break in. However over the years I realised it’s every industry. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

One of the reasons social networks have become so powerful is because people are becoming famous overnight. Unless you were already a celeb, the 1 thing in common people who became famous all had were powerful communities ie, networks.

Tila Tequilla is a prime example.  She made sure she had a huge network which helped her with modelling, music and even getting a TV show.  This was not talent, this was a network…. And the people who can make things happen wanted to leverage her network as it was valuable to them.

A quick tip for musicians or anyone with a talent:  It is going to be very difficult now for someone to get a deal from talent alone.  Unless your network is powerful, companies may not even give you a chance.  I know artists who have been signed off the stats on their MySpace page alone.  I have also known many talented artists who were not taken seriously because of low network figures.  Now I am not saying that high stats are everything but to the untrained eye they do go a long way. I am a big believer that a thousand strong community is more valuable than 10,000 followers who you have just “added”.

Your community can make you and if you have a strong foundation and you are interactive within your network, then you have the potential to do big things.  This is why your network is so key to anything you are doing.

See I believe in money, power, and respect.
First You get the money.
Then you get the muthaf*ckin, power.
After you get the f*ckin’ power muthaf*ckas will respect you.

(Little Kim-money, power and respect (radio edit))

I think this is true in gangster films and some aspects of real life but if you relate this to the world of social media, I think it is in reverse. First you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power then you will get the money.

Respect
Content is king and to have a successful blog you need to make sure your content is exceptional and that people are interested in your work. The key to any blog site is return visits. If people are returning frequently then they have some level of respect for your work. The more frequently they return, a higher level of respect and they even might start evangelising your work for you. Gary Vaynerchuk is well respected in the social media world, just like Talib Kweli is respected in the hip-hop world. Both have core fans who value what they are doing in their field. Having respect is very important and is needed if you want to have influence. When you become an influencer then you have the potential to become very powerful.

Power
If you have power and influence on the net then the world can be your oyster. You have the ability to do good (and bad), and making impact for what ever you want to do. The power has shifted from companies to individuals and, like the famous philosopher Peter Parker’s Uncle said,

“with great power comes great responsibility.”

There are a lot of people who have a lot of respect in their field and have used that to become very powerful and influential. Lily Allen holds a lot of power in numerous areas of what she does from getting media coverage to selling albums. Arguably the world’s most famous blogger Peres Hilton is somebody else who has a lot of power. He has the power to start trends, break news, and post gossip and have interaction from hundreds of people around the world. The important thing to remember here is that they gained respect first. So first you get the respect, then you get the power and once you have the power, the money will come in.

Money
Once you have the following and have become very influential in your field, as long as you play right on the money will come in. It will come in many different ways shapes and forms but you have the potential to make a good living of this. In the world of blogging, Darren Rowse has managed to do this and in music there are countless musicians who have as well.

So my advice to bloggers would be this:

See I believe in respect, power, and money.
First You get the respect.
Then you get the power.
After you get the power the money will follow you