Awarding fans badges has also become a key component in the “gamification” of the online social media experiences. Social media companies such as Foursquare, GetGlue, and others have popularized badges as a way of rewarding, engaging and motivating users. In the context of online social media, badges can be considered “virtual goods” – digital artifacts that have a visual representation. Badges can be awarded to users who complete specific tasks or activities, or reach a certain score or level of participation, or they can simply be given away as means of spreading your marketing message.

Social Media Badge Applications:
Over the last year, we have built a number of badge applications for Facebook and Twitter applications that enable fans to promote their favorite artist with a dynamic music badges (see below) which get posted on their Facebook wall.

Newsfeed Badge “Player”:
Once posted on a fan’s Facebook newsfeed, viewers can interact with the dynamic music badges. Once expanded in a viewer’s newsfeed, the badge can play one or more tracks and allows the viewers to purchase the album or click by including links to iTunes and/or Amazon.

Comprehensive Campaign Component:
It is also possible to integrate badge marketing into other, more comprehensive marketing campaigns. For example, this Nirvana Nevermind 20th email subscription application adds a marketing badge to make it more interesting and interactive on both Facebook and Twitter.

The advent of Facebook’s new covers gives fans the opportunity to express themselves by supporting or promoting their favorite music artists.  Our Artist Cover application simply automates the process by making it easy for fans to use “official artist covers”. By allowing music labels to promote official artist covers and by making it easy for fans to transform their covers, the Artist Cover application is both cost-effective and efficient! You can checkout some examples at: Sony Nashville and Interscope.

In the last 2 weeks the folks in our research department have looked at as many music label Facebook Pages as possible to identify some of the Facebook cover design trends and approaches (given Music is an industry we play in heavily). Here are some of the design trends we found:

• Album Collages Covers: Collection of popular, recent or representative album covers
• Artist Collages Covers: Collage of artists (few or many) associated with the music label
• Album Release Covers: Featuring album covers of current or coming big album releases
• Call-To-Action Covers: Covers with not-so subtle promotions or calls-to-action

Album Collage Covers

Interscope

Subpop Records

Sony Music Latin:

Artist Collage

Universal Music Group

UMG Norway

Album Release Covers

Epitaph Records

Sony Music Brazil

Vagrant Records

BEC Recording

Call-To-Action Covers
Although Facebook “discourages” excessive call-to-action messages in Cover photos (aka Ads). Here are some (good ones) – including both the very subtle and those that definitely push the limits.

Mercury Records

Kult Records

Sign up for our newsletter and we will keep you posted about ongoing design trends!

Nice piece in MTV Hive about the app we helped create for Neon Trees, Brenna Ehrlich writes:

After releasing the cover image from the single — complete with amorous eyewear — Glenn started noticing that fans were creating their own pictures inspired by that art, taking on the persona of Trixie via her heart glasses (and, subsequently, Glenn, who Trixie connotes). As a result, the band created a Facebook app that allows fans to easily make their own images, superimposing the signature sunglasses over webcam snaps.

The app — which is essentially a diversion in many respects — represents a wider opportunity for Glenn and his band, the opportunity to really connect with their fans prior to the new album’s release. “I think we were kind of rushed into [the music world] because of the success of the first record — we didn’t really have as much of a game plan and I always felt like we were catching up,” Glenn says. “But I think with this record we really have an opportunity.”

Scavenger hunts are a popular campaign category on Facebook, Twitter and mobile platforms.  The idea is similar: You look for physical or virtual (online) clues, you collect them, and when you are done, you either win a prize or are entered for a chance to win a prize.  Recently I have talked about the QR-Code based offline scavenger hunt we helped organize and develop an application for with game publisher THQ at Comic-con 2011. This post looks at an equally ambitous but online scavenger hunt we designed and developed for IDJ’s The Wanted.  Facebook users would give permission the to the application to keep track of their progress, and each day  they would have to correctly answer a question based on a clue shared by the band on their Facebook or Twitter page. The application featured hints (they could be turned on or off) and an administrate console that allowed the client to enter new question daily. At the end of the 30 day promotion, fans could enter for a chance to win a $2000 shopping spree with the band and view exclusive video content from The Wanted.

We recently implemented a Valentine’s Day Kissing Booth for One Direction on our new and updated Facebook Photo Booth application. Features include:

• Note: Also see Application Spotlight (with screenshots)…
• Ability to upload photos or use webcam
• Optional support to use photos from a user’s existing Facebook photo album
• Comprehensive photo editor with ability to rotate, position and scale the photo or logo layer
• Advanced photo editing features with ability to control brightness, contrast, hue, background color and other aspects of the photo
• Photo gallery with navigation ability (pagination, filtering by most recent or most popular)
• Management console that allows clients to moderate photos, as well as a whole suite of moderation features including white and black listing and various automated controls
• Analytics and stats including support for Google analytics and third party tracking
• Ability to publish photos directly into a user’s Facebook photo album
• Sharing capabilities on Facebook and other social networks (Twitter, i.e.)
• Optional My Photos gallery that lets users view and share their own photos
• Voting capabilities and ability to sort by most recent or most popular photos
• Ability to integrate with other Metablocks Facebook applications including custom sweepstakes and badge applications

Late last year we were asked by Island Def Jam to design and develop a Facebook Photo Booth application to help promote Justin Bieber’s upcoming Mistletoe Album.

This unique application, built on our Facebook Photo Booth app allowed fans to (digitally) “kiss” Justin under the mistletoe! The application allowed fans to upload a photo (or capture one using their webcam), position it (zoom, rotate, move, i.e.) publish it (to the gallery) and share it (on Facebook or Twitter). Fans could also vote on existing photos in the gallery as well as share them with friends.

Adding the ability to save & share your high score via Twitter or Facebook, is a great to make social gaming apps more viral.  We recently added a social media score board and sharing capabilities to the interactive video and game from We The Kings.

Facebook Leaderboard:
We worked with S-Curve’s video partners to integrate the sharing functionality directly into the We The Kings video/video game. Users who successfully played the game were able to share their high scores to the leader board via Twitter or Facebook. The sharing application forced players to share their score (through the social media channel of their choice) in order to get on the leaderboard. We also create an iframe version of the leaderboard that was accessible through the band’s website. You can try the game for yourself by clicking here.

Sharing Applications:
Below are the Twitter and Facebook version of the score sharing applications

SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings.  A number of our music label partners use SoundCloud to promote their artist tracks. All of our social media application platforms make it easy to integrate third-party widgets and API into both Facebook and Twitter applications. Our goal is to give our clients great flexibility when it comes to application deployment. To that end, we have made it very simple to incorporate SoundCloud widgets into all of our applications. Here are some examples below.

Tweematic (Twitter Wall) with SoundCloud widget:

Facebook Album Premiere Application with SoundCloud widget: