April 2015

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Product Update: Giveaway Form Changes, Splash Pages & More!

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 10:06 AM Labels: Product Updates, Radmin

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

We've made some big updates to our Radmin giveaway settings screens to make the forms more intuitive and allow for increased functionality.

We're deploying these updates today - and here's what's changing:

1. We added the ability to build a giveaway splash page.

Splash pages open up a whole new world of doing bigger and better things with giveaways - and allow us to build a dedicated landing page for any specific giveaway.

Implementing the ability to build our own splash pages was also an essential step in hosting our own landing pages for the partnership promotional blasts (Adult Spring Break, Governors Ball VIP, etc) - and once these splash pages are deployed, we will no longer need to export and send your metro lists of new email addresses from the blasts. Rather, users who enter the contests will be immediately registered and subscribed within your metro's ecosystem as if they entered any other giveaway - which also means that the relevant welcome email will generate immediately rather than having having to be manually sent by DoStuff.

Please note that you will not see the 'Splash Page' tab just yet - we are testing out these forms with our national partnership campaigns only - but we will be opening up these splash pages for metro use shortly.

2. We simplified the Giveaway Settings form to only have three tabs.

Everything from the old five-tab form is still there - but the items are easier to find and displayed in a more logical manner.

3. We re-ordered the fields on the giveaway form to match the order with which they will display on the front end.

Also, did anyone notice that you could never correctly tab through the giveaway form on the front end? That's fixed too. We also changed up some of the styles to make better use of the three-column format.

4. We moved Giveaway Settings to its own page (as opposed to displaying within a modal).

This was necessary to do in order to implement items 1-3 on this list.

Please note that the 'Giveaway Settings' link is still located in the same place in Radmin (within the COG wheel on the right-hand side of the approved events screen) - but that link will now open a screen instead of a modal.

Mac Users: We recommend holding command when clicking on the 'Giveaway Settings' link if you would like to open this page in a separate tab. PC Users: Same deal, but hold control instead.

We hope these improvements accelerate your pace on the path to success. Thanks so much for reading this quick update - and we'll be back at the same time next week with many more advancements!

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 4/27/15

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 2:27 PM Labels: KPI Updates

Dallas takes home the honor of winner of the week, as they had their highest week of traffic since launch.

A couple of big beer-themed giveaways helped push Do214 over the top, but it was their 1-year anniversary party that really made the difference last week.

Some details:

The event, which featured Dan Deacon, was free with RSVP (good for 900+ onsite RSVPs) and $5 for guaranteed admission to recoup some of the COGS of the event
The event page itself got over 4,000 pageviews
The show got a lengthy press write up in the Dallas Observer, their local alt weekly.
As promised, things got a little weird, but not so weird as to prevent a great crowd

All of this is a prime example of a good excuse to throw a party that is (in ascending order of importance)

A win for your site in terms of traffic/RSVPs/new users
A win for your DoXYZ's brand, since people know you've been around for a while and can put on a kick ass party
Ideally a win for your business, if you can sell in presenting or supporting sponsors for the event

Need more proof that anniversary parties work? DoNYC had a couple killer parties for their 1st anniversary. Do206 booked an intimate series of acts to mark their one year. Do312 has thrownway popular anniversary bashes.

Start planning your anniversary, line up some sponsors you can get to pay for it, and celebrate your longevity!

Reach out to Jay or Eusebio in Dallas for a more detailed recap from someone in the trenches, as well as tips for throwing your own anniversary party, and check out all your audience stats in the updated KPI report below:

Metro News: Welcome Kelsey and Shaina to Do615 and Do502, DoLA blows up Festival Supreme’s pre-sale, and more

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 2:17 PM Labels: Metro News

Our regular Metro News updates highlight big wins, cool ideas, and notable events from around the Network so you can stay up to date on what your counterparts around the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are doing.

A few new additions and a couple of big wins this month. Check out what’s been going on lately around the Network below.

Welcome Kelsey and Shaina!

Most of you have probably heard by now, but Do615 recently brought on Kelsey DeWald as their new GM. Kelsey went to college in Nashville to study Music Business & Production at Belmont University, but spent the better part of the last decade in Los Angeles working at Sony/ATV licensing subsidiary Extreme Music. Kelsey’s happy to be back in Nashville and working with the Do615 team!

Kelsey’s not the only new addition to the Network these past couple weeks. Do502 just hired Shaina Wagner as their new Manager of Sales and Events. Shaina has lived in Louisville the past three years, and first got her start in the local music scene working as a host at non-profit radio station Crescent Hill Radio.

Be sure to give Kelsey and Shaina a warm welcome next time you have a chance!

DoLA Blows It Up For Festival Supreme

The other week, DoLA was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to help announce the half-off “Trust Us” presale for Festival Supreme -- Tenacious D’s comedy and oddity festival. Afterwards, DoLA found out that the link in their newsletter led to over $10k in ticket sales, helping to sell out the presale.

Now, DoLA and Festival Supreme are working on ideas to expand their relationship through the October festival. It shows what can happen when you knock it out of the park early for a big partner!

DoStuff Office Exchange

This month we’re running the first DoStuff office exchange of 2015. Some of us from the DoStuff Delivery team are going to be spending a week with a particular metro, working out of their office, spending time on some pet projects, and getting a better feel for the city and its scene.

Here’s where you’ll find everyone over these couple weeks:

This week (4/13-4/17)

doNYC: Stuart
Do416: Kristin

Next week (4/20-4/24)

Do210: Johnny
Do502: Ted
Do415: Jordan

Other News

Here's a quick rundown of other big happenings around the Network:

People Love Their Bourdain: Facebook posts announcing Anthony Bourdain’s speaking tour went crazy for both Do214 and Do512. Although at $100+ per ticket, there better be a lot of liquor and street food served at these things to get that authentic Bourdain experience.

Do615, Do415, Do206, and Do312 -- if you haven’t shared this event page on your socials yet and its not sold out, do it now!!

Do512’s Rowdy SXSW: If you weren’t able to party with the Do512 gang at SXSW this year, check out this awesome video to relive some of the highlights.
Do416 Day: Yesterday was 416 Day in Toronto and the first of Do416’s big #Discover416 event series. If haven’t already, share around some of their awesome photos from last night.

Product Update: Facebook Share Images, RSS Latest Feeds, Radmin /Pages Searches and more!

1 comment: Posted by Anonymous at 11:37 AM Labels: FrontEnd, Product Updates, Radmin

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

The following updates are going live tomorrow...

You'll be able to search for /p pages in Radmin. Radmin -> Content -> Pages will be the place to go to search for any unpublished or published /p page by title.

Unpublished /p pages will be hidden from Google (as well as front end) search. We added code to all unpublished pages to hide them from public search engines.

We built RSS feeds for your Latest Pages. Head to DoXYZ.com/latest.rss to check them out

(once they're live).

We fixed the preview cards that are automatically generated when sharing a link from your site on Twitter. Presently, posting a link on Twitter does not generate any sort of preview. This must be changed.

We added a Facebook 'Share Image' field to Event and User pages in Radmin. Now, you can control the image that displays when you (or someone else) shares an event or list on Facebook.

Please note that if you add an image shortly before sharing, you'll want to use Facebook's Debugger Tool to refresh Facebook's image scrape and ensure that the newest photo will be included.

We'll be adding this functionality for /p pages shortly as well.

We updated the Facebook Bookmarklet - and added new support for events that don't end with a slash (/). Please note that once this fix goes out, you will want to re-add the new Bookmarklet to your browser.

We fixed a bug that was breaking profile pages for users with vanity URLs on new ECPs. This is especially helpful for any metro-operated ECPs that have "List" users, such as Do512 Family.

We also fixed bugs that were affecting the display of the 'All Tastemakers' pages, causing duplicate user accounts, displaying old events in ad reports and preventing all RSVP lists from sending if one list was failing.

Thanks for reading this week's product update! Now go forth and WIN.

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 4/13/15

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 11:55 AM Labels: KPI Updates

Today's winner of the week will be a brief study in the importance of Facebook efficiency.

We'll use two of Do512's most viral posts as examples for this case study:

Post 1 - World Cup Watch Party:

Broke Do512's record for highest reach of a single post with over 1.3 million organic reach
Accrued 2,251 likes, 87 comments, and 134 shares
Touted a massive free outdoor watch party to see USA take on Belgium in the World Cup

Post 2 - Bluebonnet Photo Tip:

Racked up 261,120 in organic reach
Broke Do512's record for highest number of shares with 1,125 organic shares, along with piling up 2,402 likes and 272 comments
Clued in people to a good spot to take photos in a field of bluebonnets

So with those facts, which would you wager drove more traffic to Do512 - a massive watch party for USA's elimination game in the world's largest sporting event....or some tidbits on where to find the prettiest flowers?

If you bet on the watch party, you're dead wrong.

The World Cup Watch Party post drove just under 500 site visitors.

The Bluebonnet post drove 20,000 site visitors, caused Do512 to double their site traffic YoY, and drove more site traffic than any other Facebook post in the history of Do512.

There are several factors that cause this huge disparity, but the biggest of them is post type. World cup was posted as a photo with a bit.ly link. Bluebonnet was posted as a link-share with the automatically generated content card. This difference meant that even though the world cup post got 5X reach as the Bluebonnet post, it got less than 3% of the traffic.

This may seem obvious, since Facebook has pushed people to use its automatic link-share for over a year now, but there are still numerous examples of metros using images or text-based posts to try and drive site traffic (cough cough Do206, Do312, Do415, and other metros I didn't have the time to check).

We're not saying that you should never post a photo. But if you can answer the question of "Do I in any way want this FB post to drive traffic back to my metro's site" with "Yes," then use a link-share over an image or text status update. Period.

Check out all your stats (social and otherwise) in the updated KPI report below:

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 4/6/2015

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 11:51 AM Labels: KPI Updates

Today marks our 40th week of KPI updates, and DoNYC marked that special occasion by getting 99% more site traffic than last year (heck, we'll call it an even double).

The reason for their success:

Their list of participating record stores got 300+ more clicks than any other link in their email which contributed to...
Their highest click rate in 3 months, which caused...
A 145% increase in YoY Email traffic, which meant...
Presto! They have 2X the traffic from last year. Elementary, dear Watson.

What this really highlights is the importance of creating a relevant, on-brand, useful list in the shortest amount of time. It likely took DoNYC under an hour to populate this list, and then it just became a matter of featuring it in their newsletter subject line (with the copy "Record Store Day is Coming") and in the editorial section. And that alone was enough to make it their most popular page on the site over the last week.

Plus, next year, they can easily trot out the same list on RSD, plus ideally glean some organic traffic for people looking for a guide to record stores during the rest of the year.

One final note before you dive into last week's stats - a bug prevented Google Analytics from recording our BUY/WIN/RSVP/ADD clicks for the previous week. We'll have it fixed today, but feel free to reach out with any questions. And with that, check out all of the KPIs you need to know:

Metro News: Do416 Redesign, Do617 Pop-up Record Store, and Daphne Joins DoStuff

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 1:54 PM Labels: Metro News

Our regular Metro News updates highlight big wins, cool ideas, and notable events from around the Network so you can stay up to date on what your counterparts around the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are doing.

It’s April and Spring is in full swing. As everyone is finally beginning to thaw out, check out all the big wins from around the Network the past few weeks.

Do416 Redesign & #Discover416

If you haven’t been over to Do416.to in the past week, you need to go check it out. Do416 debuted a new site design last Friday (built on the new staging URLs), along with a brand new logo.

If that wasn't enough, Do416 also debuted a new “Discover 416” event series co-sponsored by 416 Local Lager, Arts & Crafts, Indie 88 FM Toronto, and Spacing Magazine. Discover 416 will be a 5-part series, focusing on the different neighborhoods and sounds of Toronto.

Do416 has been promoting the #Discover416 hashtag using funny trivia about Toronto

The first Discover 416 event, fittingly, will be on April 16th -- “416 Day”. This show at The Garrison is also Do416’s first ever RSVP event, so feel free to pass along any pointers to Ian and Jamie about how to maximize upside for the event.

Give it up to Do416 for a monster Spring so far!

Do617 x PBR Pop-up Record Shop

Do617 is partnering up with the folks at PBR to host a Pop-up Record Shop on Record Store Day, April 18th. Taking place inside Brighton Music Hall, the event is bringing together New England record labels and vendors to swap and sell vinyl, and wash it all down with free PBR.

This is Do617’s first event with Pabst, so be sure to spread the word to any friends you have up in Boston!

Welcome Daphne!

Daphne Lehman joined the DoStuff team full-time last Monday. Daphne interned with Do512 back in the day and we’re really excited to have her back in the DoStuff Network team. Daphne is heading up Network program coordination, so expect to be hearing from her a lot more often.

Other News

Here's a quick rundown of other big happenings around the Network:

Do206's “Have You Heard” debut: Do206 kicked off their “Have You Heard” series with Jameson last week. The events highlight lesser-known bands, and are only $3 with RSVP. It’s a great long-term concept with a great brand, so hit us up about proposal decks if you are thinking about starting a “Have You Heard” series in your metro.
DoLA’s “Best Shows” Gets a Nod: In a write-up about Kera and the Lesbians, Kera herself gets asked about winning DoLA’s “Best Show of 2014” award.

Product Update: Delete Your 'Latest' Posts, Center Your Pages' Images And More!

No comments: Posted by Anonymous at 3:03 PM Labels: Product Updates

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

Presenting a fresh batch of updates to kick off the month! No jokes. Just the straight up truth.

The following updates were just deployed and are now live on your site:

You can now delete your Latest posts. The 'delete' button lives in the bottom right-hand corner of the Latest posts' editing screen.

Please note: This feature is only to be used in the event of a duplicate or otherwise unintended post. Your Latest feeds should tell the story of your city, so you should not delete any posts concerning past giveaways, show previews or on sale announcements - you'll just want to let your new posts push those farther down the feed.

We also made sure to automatically bust the Latest cache and refresh your feed whenever a post is deleted - so you'll always see an updated list after deleting.

You can sort the pending queue by title. This was requested by Jamie from 416 so she could check her pending queue for a possible duplicate event.

Images that are uploaded to /p pages will automatically center by default. They were previously left aligned by default. Now, you don't have to dig through a mess of code to center some images.

We built a tool to auto-populate the 'Add Event' form when adding events from Facebook. If you're adding a large quantity of events from Facebook, we highly recommend using this tool. Here's how to do so:

1. Log in with Facebook on any metro.

2. Click the 'Add Event' button under MYXYZ.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see a link for the FB Bookmarklet.

4. Click on that link and drag it to your bookmarks bar.

5. Navigate to the Facebook Event that you want to add (you do not need to leave the 'Add Event' form open).

6. Click the bookmarklet link in your bookmarks bar. The event form will automatically populate with all of the Facebook event's primary information.

A couple things to note:

- You will still want to do some light editing to make sure all of the information is expressed correctly on the event form.

- You will still need to assign the event a category (since Facebook doesn't express that information).

- You will still need to add bands (when applicable).

- You will still need to answer the spam question.

- You will need to change the venue IF the venue on the Facebook event is not an exact match to a venue in Radmin. This form is not able to recognize keywords.

- The event's cover photo will populate to the Poster URL (since Facebook events usually contain text-rich poster images).
- You will still need to add an event description.

Users who delete their accounts will now be removed from all event activity. This should put an end to the angry emails by users who still see their display names in event activity long after their accounts have been deleted. (They were never removed before.)

Please note that event activity is still cached for a maximum of one hour - so if a user contacts you wondering why their name is still is appearing in the event activity shortly after (s)he deleted it, you'll want to edit any part of the event's key details (title, name, date, topline, etc) and then tell the user to refresh event the screen. The contentious name will be gone.

Latest posts and /p pages will no longer display on ECPs. This was a request by Jay Cox - and makes great sense since our partner calendars generally live on music websites that have their own editorial initiatives and only want to out-source the event listings portion of their content.

We fixed up ongoing and repeating event widgets to display more characters and changed the font size of the 'Free' and 'Every _Day' top bars to prevent text from overlapping with the title.

We fixed a bug that was caused by adding capitalized test to event, artist, venue, user or /p pages. Capitalizing URL text such as "/P", "/EVENTS," and "/USERS" had been leading users to a page not found.

And we fixed a bug that was preventing the 'Ask Birthdate?' field on RSVP forms from correctly validating a user's birthdate. You can rest assured that the 'Ask Birthdate?' field will prevent underage users from RSVPing to any event with 'Require minimum age?' checked.

That's all for us. Thanks so much for reading this Product Update! We hope you all have a super smooth week!

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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Product Update: Giveaway Form Changes, Splash Pages & More!

Our regular Product Updates give you a rundown of the features and bug fixes that were rolled out over the past week, plus a look ahead to some of the bigger changes that are on the way.

We've made some big updates to our Radmin giveaway settings screens to make the forms more intuitive and allow for increased functionality.

We're deploying these updates today - and here's what's changing:

1. We added the ability to build a giveaway splash page.

Splash pages open up a whole new world of doing bigger and better things with giveaways - and allow us to build a dedicated landing page for any specific giveaway.

2. We simplified the Giveaway Settings form to only have three tabs.

Everything from the old five-tab form is still there - but the items are easier to find and displayed in a more logical manner.

3. We re-ordered the fields on the giveaway form to match the order with which they will display on the front end.

4. We moved Giveaway Settings to its own page (as opposed to displaying within a modal).

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

How You (and the network) Did Last Week - 4/27/15

The event, which featured Dan Deacon, was free with RSVP (good for 900+ onsite RSVPs) and $5 for guaranteed admission to recoup some of the COGS of the event
The event page itself got over 4,000 pageviews
The show got a lengthy press write up in the Dallas Observer, their local alt weekly.
As promised, things got a little weird, but not so weird as to prevent a great crowd

All of this is a prime example of a good excuse to throw a party that is (in ascending order of importance)

A win for your site in terms of traffic/RSVPs/new users
A win for your DoXYZ's brand, since people know you've been around for a while and can put on a kick ass party
Ideally a win for your business, if you can sell in presenting or supporting sponsors for the event

Friday, April 17, 2015