Rules of thumb:

• Brand / Community manager should know EVERYTHING about the brand and or be a huge fan them-self.
• Community language and slang should be used.
• Brand should be transparent about being involved within the community.
• Off brand subjects and conversation is a must.
• Supply links when relevant to product pages or content pages on site but try not to overburden the user with links unless necessary.
• Don’t just share links to your own pages (be a good resource).

Here are some examples of niche communities and how to engage within them.

Fashion Communities

• StyleMob – Answer Style Advice Questions, Comment on user fashion, Post images, use forum to ask Brand Related Questions and receive consumer feedback.

• Fashionising – Heavy discussion about designers, fashion tips and style recommendations, and comment on blog posts.

• The Fashion Spot – Wide spread topics on forums, comment on fashion tips and include products and links back to site,

Male Related Communities

• Uncrate - Answer community allows users to post question and answers about products. “Real Advice from Real Men”.

• MadeMan – Young Men interacting about humor, sports, gear, “grub”, and women. Post comments and join in conversations about related topics.

• Art of Manliness -  This community requires member profile allows connection hub for men to brand. Community supplies member birthdays, events, and forums.  This gives the brand multiple levels of potential conversation.

Parenting Communities

• Cafe Mom - Thousands of conversations discussing multiple baby & children brand products to engage in, supply links within, and comment on. Comment on pictures that use products. Join and host groups to supply more content to curious users.  Write a daily journal, being transparent and clear.  The community manager here should be a real mother or father.

• iVillage Parenting – Message board based community that offers thousands of threads and open ended conversations.  Brand manager should be a transparent parent and communicative.  This community requires active conversationalists who will stay on topic and be insightful.  There are many opportunities to supply other users with links and brand related content.

Not leveraging communities that tie into your brand niche is a waste of many opportunities that are available online.  There are thousands upon thousands of communities dedicated to certain niches.  These communities and networks are stimulated on a daily and hourly basis by consumers who are actively seeking out information, posting thoughts and reviews of their own, or just stopping by to read up on new content.  By engaging with these users in a space that they are most commonly not marketed to, yet in a friendly, one-on-one level could help to create new customers and brand evangelists.

Follow Stephanie on Twitter here.  Get more 10e20 goodness by subscribing to our RSS feed here.

For this post I looked for some specific design and art related social sites and tried to dissect what each site is all about, how they may be beneficial to use and how to become a contributing member with the community.

deviantART

deviantArt aims to provide a place for any artist to exhibit and discuss works. Works are organized in a comprehensive category structure, including photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, Flash, filmmaking, skins for applications, Furry and others. DA also has extensive downloadable resources such as tutorials and stock photography. Member submissions are known as “deviations.” The goal of the site is to allow artists and art lovers to interact in a variety of ways, ranging from the submission of art to conversations on a number of topics.

This site is a thriving community. The best way to get noticed and to have the community interacting with your work is to comment, comment and comment some more! Post replies and threads in the forums. Comment on peoples artwork and user pages, use the chat room and the shout box. Give out good and constructive comments, to stand out – many people will like to return the favor. You don’t get anything out of it if you don’t put something into it. In other words, you reap what you sow.

Although all the reviews and comments about deviantART are not favorable. Encyclopedia Dramatica has this to say about the community, “If the art community as a whole had cancer, then deviantART would be the biggest malignant tumor of them all.”

Concept Art.org

A lot of the members from deviantART migrate to ConceptArt.org if their work is of a certain caliber. There is drama here just like in deviantART and most of it seems to come from deviantART members that can’t take constructive critiques.

I like the layout of the site and how they feature certain artists and thumbnails of various artworks. The forums are pretty similar to DA and the heavier threads pertain to critiques and art technique suggestions and ideas.

Flickr

Flickr is a HUGE online photo and video hosting website as well as online community. There is an overwhelming amount of amazing photography and art to view. They have a great search feature and also offer users the ability to either release their images under certain common usage licenses or label them as “all rights reserved”. The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses – although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with “tags”, the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license.

Flickr groups are a great way to post your photos and get a specific audience. They even have local groups. There are groups for a variety of topics, velvet art is your thing? There is a group for that! Learn about other great ways to market on Flickr.

Flickr has entered into partnerships with third parties to offer printing of various forms of merchandise, including business cards, photo books, stationery, personalized credit cards, and large-size prints, from companies such as Moo, Blurb, Tiny Prints, Capital One, Imagekind, and QOOP. In addition, Flickr has partnered with Getty Images to sell stock photos from some users.

Flickr asks photo submitters to organize images using tags (a form of metadata), which enable searchers to find images related to particular topics, such as place names or subject matter. Flickr was also an early website to implement tag clouds, which provide access to images tagged with the most popular keywords. Because of its support for tags, Flickr has been cited as a prime example of effective use of folksonomy.

Coroflot

Coroflot is the creative world at work. It has grown to host over 1.4 million images of creative work, from the portfolios of over 150,000 creative professionals and students from nearly every country on earth. Coroflot users are industrial, graphic, fashion, interior, textile and interaction designers; 3D modeling and rendering specialists; architects, illustrators, art directors, design managers, and dozens of other disciplines.

There are no membership requirements, application processes, or invites. If you’re a designer or someone who avidly follows creative work, they want you. If your work is good, it will find its way to the surface; if you need inspiration or advice, the world’s most active professional creative community can show you what’s what.

Vimeo

Vimeo, which had the original HD internet video, is a respected community of creative’s that are passionate about the videos they make. Vimeo’s groups allow you to create communities within Vimeo around the things you like. Share and discuss videos, photos, music, and events with other people that enjoy the same stuff. The more you interact with the community, the more interest in your work there will be. Get involved and you will enjoy the rewarding experience that Vimeo can provide.

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers is an international community of designers and artists of all kinds who visit the site to get color inspiration, ideas and feedback for both their professional and personal projects. COLOURlovers’ loyal members create colors, palettes and patterns to nurture their ongoing love affair with color. They join color-inspired groups and forums and share the love by commenting on their favorite creations.

This community is very passionate about its… color or colour, whatever way you spell it. A lot of niche sites in design and art have a tight community feel already because of the content, that holds true with COLOURlovers. The few times that I joined a forum conversation I was overwhelmed at the amount of support it’s members gave.  You can jump right in on the conversation at the forums by asking questions about specific colors or giving advice on already posted questions. If you need some simple color inspiration this is your spot, these people like LOVE color!

Art and design related social networking sites can at first seem foreign, but once you spend some time and get familiar with the language used and the correct way to get the most out of it – you are set.  What are some social art/design related sites that have helped you?

• The Super Bowl
  Sure, the Super Bowl is in February, but January is the time of the year to go after Super Bowl linkbait.  Break down the teams, relate it to your business… but hurry before sites get too saturated!
• Things to Look Forward to in 2010
  Whether it be movies, gadgets, albums releases… people love articles that lay out the good things to come. So put together the best things that relate to your blog/industry to boost your awareness.
• Martin Luther King Jr.
  The 18th of January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in honor of one of the most influential Americans ever.  Chronicling the breakthroughs that have happened because of him, looking in on his past or any type of analysis that can be done on Dr. King will always do well in social media (and outside of social media!).
• TV Shows Coming Back
  A few shows came back in December, but the biggest US  TV shows are coming back this month and there are plenty of opportunities to break down what has happened since the last season, how the new season is going and much more.
• 2010 Predictions
  This was hot last month and will remain hot throughout the month.  If you have expert knowledge in a specific area, make some educated guesses as to what will happen this year in your industry.
• Dubai
  With the world’s tallest building opening yesterday, there is a great deal of information that can be  put together around this new (financially troubled)  super destination.
• Golden Globes
  The ‘pre-Oscar’ awards occur on the 17th and are a great indicator for the Oscars.  Breaking down who wins, what they wear, winners, losers, who got hosed and who didn’t deserve to win could all be potential Golden ideas.
• Lost Premiere
  This gets its own bullet point as it technically launches in February and is the last season of the hit show.  Lost  fans are really passionate and gung-ho about the series so recaps/breakdowns/comparisons/predictions should perform well.

Have any other hot topics for the month of  January?  Feel free to share examples below!

…and don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Bravo is giving “Top Chef” fans an inside view and chance to watch the season six finale among their favorite chef’testants with the award-winning ultimate virtual viewing party for the finale of “Top Chef: Las Vegas,” this Wednesday, December 9 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.  Fans of the show can voice their opinions on the series through Twitter, Facebook Connect, and live mobile chat. Bravo viewers will also get the chance to interact directly with their favorite “Top Chef” judges and chefs live, when they join the party by Twittering their comments during the finale or by following Twitter.com/BravoTV, and answering live viewer questions via mobile and online chats.

Viewing parties aren’t new — anyone can invite some friends over, lay out some chips and dip, and queue up the San Diego audition episode of American Idol. Thanks to the rise of popularity and adoption of social networking, however, TV networks can “host” virtual viewing parties and attract their most ardent fans to engage with them. Bravo has done this before with a virtual party for The Real Housewives of NYC, and it resulted in them winning an MMA Global Marketing Award.

Why bother with virtual parties? Well, for the network, it’s a great way to have a bit more control over an event. People are already going to be tweeting about your show (I tweet all the time about Top Chef and other shows when I’m watching them), but if you can corral some of your biggest fans into a funnel, you can better keep track of them (e.g., via a hashtag for Twitter, texts via promotional numbers, Discussion tabs in Facebook). Additionally, you can get users to tune in live vs. recording the show and watching it later so they can interact with other fans and not run into spoilers. This tactic can help the network determine more quickly how many people tuned in.

Bravo’s clearly appealing to the “social” aspect of social media by engaging with their fans and users and allowing them to interact with their brand and stars (e.g., their Real Housewives and the chefs and hosts of Top Chef). This is the virtual equivalent of going to an autograph signing or a meet and greet; in fact, I remember over a decade ago when MTV would set up Q&As in chat rooms to “meet” some of their VJs (back when MTV still had VJs and played music).  The “celebrity” hook is a big draw — a lot of folks wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to engage and interact with someone from their favorite show, movie, band or company.

Networks aren’t the only ones to get in on the “virtual” party action — I’ve seen more and more brands set up virtual parties of many different occasions (pajama parties, event meet ups, etc). I think it’s a nice tactic, albeit new and still rough around the edges, but all in all I think it’s a great thing for a company/brand to do for their most loyal and enthusiastic fans. It’s obviously difficult to set up a virtual party if you don’t have a strong brand or aren’t established/recognizable, but for big brands and popular companies, it’s something to consider, especially now that social networks make it easier than ever before.

Have any of you seen good/successful examples of “virtual” parties or events conducted via social networks? Share your examples in the comments!

• Best/Worst of the Year and Year in Review
  What exactly happened in 2009?  What was good?  What was bad?  These are stories that will always be social media gold this time of year.  Just get in and get your content out early as it gets pretty congested in the last few weeks of the year.
• Avatar
  This movie was big last month and is going to be even bigger this month.  With the storyline & graphics, this is much more than an average movie and should be the talk of the social sphere for a long while so get your content created now!
• 2009 Economic Outlook
  This year has been up and down economically and any breakdowns or insight into 2010 will shape up would perform across the board socially.
• College Football
  This is the hottest time of the year for college football, especially with some of the BCS drama that could unfold in the coming weeks.
• 2010 Predictions
  If you have expert knowledge in a specific area crafting your predictions up for the new year is great content and should make noise in social communities.
• Holiday Happenings
  A good deal of  holiday articles have been created already, but interesting holiday lights, shopping experiences or sales information still have a great chance of getting hot!
• Sherlock Homes
  Robert Downey Jr. is one of the most popular actors going, and this Guy Richtie adaptation of the popular character is sure to be huge this month.  What other characters have been brought back?  How well does this compare to originals? There are plenty of ideas to parlay this with for sure.
• News Years Eve
  Parlaying lists and content with New Years celebrations and festivities is a surefire winner year after new year.
• The Decade in Review
  Not only is it the end of the year, it’s also the end of the 00’s!  What were the best items of the decade? The worst? The possibilities are endless!

Have any other hot topics for the month of  December?  Feel free to share examples below!

…and don’t forget to follow 10e20 on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Avatar: check, Background Design: check, Bio: check

Here be the basics. People want to know who and what they are following. If you don’t have an avatar to me, that is a big Twitter Fail. Use the two simplest ways of showing and telling potential followers what you or your business is all about. Design a Twitter background that reflects your ideas and slap on a nice picture of yourself or your company logo, mascot or colors. Also tell me about yourself in the bio line; this is a simple way to tell me more and show me where else you reside online and off.

I find it hard sometimes not to just follow someone back out of politeness; however, if I get to that profile page and none of what is listed above is included or I don’t find anything interesting in their stream then I say oh well, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and leave without following.

Private, Why?

Don’t set your tweets to private. Plain and simple. When you shield your account from the general public, you’re going to get fewer followers than if your account were publicly accessible. People like getting a sneak peek of someone before deciding whether they want to follow him/her.

Links to your Twitter Page:

Linking to your Twitter page from other social profiles like Facebook or LinkdIn will help with adding more followers. The more links to your Twitter profile out there, the more chances of someone checking you out and following you. Have a bunch of friends on Facebook? Ask them if they are on Twitter. “Oh yeah you are, well what’s your user name?” Add your Twitter URL to all of your signatures, go ahead- pimp it out! Make a comment on a blog? Why not add your Twitter name underneath the post?

Follow Reciprocators:

Reciprocators are those who will probably follow you back because they have about as many followers as they have people following them. If you come across someone who follows a large number of people and has a big following, chances are this person will follow you back once you start following him/her.

Timely Tweets:

During peak times is when you should try to tweet your best stuff. This will help maximize your retweet potential. The time of day? 4PM Friday EST. How did this number/time come about? Viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella in “The Science of Retweeting” spent nine months analyzing roughly 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets. #followfriday anyone?

#FollowFriday?:

Some would say add this to the list of helpful ways to build followers. Follow and recommend people, and follow users who retweet your stuff the most. However, personally I rarely look at anything with #followfriday on it. What are your thoughts?

Tools of the Trade:

Twitterholic

This site scans the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet. A few times a day they calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit within the database.

Twellow

A site application that allows you to make targeted searches by categories. Great way to find specific industries, businesses and people to follow that may reciprocate.

SocialOomph

They offer tools that allow you to tweet more efficiently with lots of automated functions like scheduling tweets, track keywords, follow those that follow you, etc.

If you follow some of these tips, I am sure you can begin to see the follower count in your Twitter profile increase. These are just a small fraction of all the possible ways to increase the number of people following you. For more tips, check out Mashable’s Twitter Guidebook — they have a huge list of the basics to the advanced for those hungry for more. Also check out Fastcompany’s post called Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted. While you’re at it, follow me @patrickwinfieldand us @10e20

Using the same avatar or similar one on all your social network accounts can help to establish your brand and make it easier for other users to recognize you and feel like they are familiar with you and your accounts. Using an image of yourself as an avatar can bring you more credibility and trust. People want to get the feeling that there is a real person behind every email, profile, website or whatever other thing that represents yourself and the services you provide.

What to use?

If you are a company, use the logo. Having trouble fitting your logo into those universal square dimensions? Try to use a portion of your logo or an icon that is in the same styling. Another option is your symbol. This could be a picture of something that represents you even further than the logo, for example we use Charlie for our Twitter profile pic.

If you are creating a personal account, the best option would be a simple photograph of your head shot. Try to use an updated picture — you don’t want to deceive people. Imagine that face-to-face meet up and someone says how different you look. I get that sometimes — my beard comes and goes

Changing your avatar too often can be confusing to people trying to find you by your photo or the avatar they are used to seeing associated with you. If you must change it out, make sure you have a good reason for doing so. I know that personally when I scroll through my TweetDeck during the day, I look for specific people by their avatars first. If they change them often, it is harder for me to spot them. However, if they are interesting enough, I will find them, regardless if they have a new avatar.

• 54% of business block employee access to social networking sites
• 19% allow social networking for work-related purposes
• 16% allow limited personal use
• 10% allow full use

Ironically, according to a study cited in the article, “94% of companies are continuing to invest in online communities and social media.” Over half of U.S. businesses block social media sites at work, yet 94% of businesses are acknowledging the importance of social media and are starting to invest in it? It’s kind of like being a retail business that doesn’t let its employees buy anything.

I’m likely biased because I get paid to tinker around on social media and networking sites, but I do think that businesses should allow responsible and periodical usage of social media at work for the following reasons:

1. It helps morale. Everyone needs a mental break from work, and browsing Facebook or sending out a few tweets is no different than surfing the web, reading your email or checking voice messages in terms of time consumed. If you ban social sites, your employees are still going to figure out a way to procrastinate a little bit using the Internet or by taking 20 coffee breaks. Let your employees have a little freedom to stretch their legs and enjoy a little personal time at work — it’ll likely make them happier and more willing to tackle their tasks.
   
2. It builds knowledge of social media. What better way to build up awareness of the value of social media marketing by encouraging hands-on experience? If you ban social media usage at work but appoint some random person in marketing to handle the company’s social media efforts, you could be missing out on the knowledge that other employees can bring to the table. Maybe there’s someone at the office who is really passionate about social networking and knows enough about the subject to bring value to the company. You shouldn’t stifle these people; rather, you should encourage their usage of various sites and networks and maybe even ask for updates on what they’ve learned about existing sites, new sites, etc.
   
3. It can help solve work problems/answer questions by reaching out to large networks. If there’s a work-related question that needs to be answered, it can potentially be resolved by reaching out via a social network like Twitter or LinkedIn. Whenever I’m stumped on an SEO question, I’ve sometimes tweeted the problem and gotten a great slew of helpful answers from my community of followers. Social networks can oftentimes be a great problem-solving tool.
   
4. It can be great marketing for the company. Businesses would probably love for their happy employees to share how great it is to work at Company X — it’s great branding for them and can serve as positive reputation management. I tweet all the time about how I love working for 10e20 and how I have the best coworkers in the world — that’s great for our company and great for business.
   

Obviously, there are some downsides to letting employees have full reign of social media usage at work. I’ve seen people update their Facebook status complaining about a work task or saying negative things about customers/clients. This sort of behavior is clearly unprofessional and doesn’t reflect well on either the employee or the business. However, I think that a little bit of training and awareness can stifle these sorts of incidents. Clearly state your social media usage policy to new employees and say that while you encourage responsible and occasional usage of social media and networking, be courteous, professional and mindful of the company who’s employing them. Most employees have enough common sense to know what’s acceptable and what’s inappropriate, and the occasional mild slipup should be met with a friendly reminder and meeting about company policy.

However, if you’ve got an employee who constantly complains about work, bitches about coworkers or makes inappropriate comments that can reflect poorly on the company, you should consider whether you want that person on staff instead of wondering if you should block his/her usage at work (after all, it’s easy to fire up the computer at home and make the same disparaging comments).

I think that many businesses can thrive if they educate their employees on proper social media usage and encourage them to network responsibly. I’ll leave you with an interesting Attack of the Show video clip that discusses this topic — it pretty much sums up my sentiments.

Attack of the Show

What do you think? Is it a black and white issue to block social media at work, or are there more variables that should be considered? Post your comments below or tweet your response to @10e20. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed!

StumbleUpon is a great social site because it features a diverse crowd that spans hundreds of topics and thousands of tags.  StumbleUpon can work well for ANY site and shouldn’t be overlooked in any social media strategies.  This is a quick list that you can reference before submitting (called “discovering” on the site) anything to StumbleUpon:

• Use Proper Tags
  Tagging allows for you to label your content for consumption by others.  If other users are a fan of “web-design” and you use that tag, they will have a much higher probability to getting found on StumbleUpon.  The tags page shows tags that are recently hot and most popular all time.
• Use Multiple Tags
  By leveraging as many different tags, you can give your content a much higher chance of getting traffic and momentum through the various different types of users.

  For instance, an infographic about how much NFL players make per year could be popular with the tags:

football, sports, NFL, salaries, wealth

If you have a StumbleAds account, you can also view the number of users who are subscribed to different categories.  Using this, you can make sure to include a few of the tags with large subscribers!

• Submit It to the Proper Topic
  Many times users may see a topic that has a large following or is extremely popular and they select that thinking it will lead to the most exposure.  Not the case.  If submitting to incorrect categories, you will most likely receive fewer positive votes and more negative votes.  Use the drop down menu if none of the standard categories work for you.

• Leverage Popular Friends
  Having an existing following can greatly help your chances in getting stories popular.  On StumbleUpon people can “subscribe” to your stumbles, which means that your discoveries will have a good chance of showing up for them. Talk to anyone in your network and see if you know any users with a good deal of subscribers in a field that is targeted in certain categories.  If you have a good relationship with them, see if they would be interested in discovering your content for you to help give you a boost!

• Share with your Friends
  You can use the “share” function to send your stories directly to your friends.  This new method allows you to hit all of your friends with your message.  Hover over the thumbnail of an article that you have recently thumbed and a share button should appear:
  By sharing this story you can pick and chose who to send it to (or you can send to all).  Recipients will be notified that they have a new item to be stumbled:

  

• Don’t Spam
  Like any social site, spamming the site by submitting Digg/Reddit links, using incorrect categories or sharing every story will be frowned upon.  Be a good user and add value to the community.  If you aren’t adding value,  you probably won’t see much coming back to your campaigns either.
  

• Use StumbleUpon Groups
  Sign up for relevant StumbleUpon groups that are already popular.  A detailed list of groups can be found here and the most popular groups can be found here.  Many times these groups have active discussions where you can talk to fellow members and moderators.  Moderators can also post links to sites so make friends with them!  Group activity has been declining sharply since its inception, but it is always better to try every avenue possible.

And that is it!  To me, one of the most important things with StumbleUpon is to make sure you are having fun.  The SU audience is very friendly, helpful and insightful, so enjoy yourself and do your best to join the community!

Have any other tips or tricks for “discovering” stories on StumbleUpon?  Feel free to share in the comments!  And also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Twitter!

Her Morning Elegance Stop Motion Video

This just proves that if you create something cool and original and put it on YouTube, you can get noticed… and a pretty girl in pajamas does not hurt either.

The video has blown up on the most popular social media sites and resulted in over 7 million views on YouTube.

Oren Lavie, who wrote the song and directed the video, was a simple struggling singer-songwriter who just hit a jackpot with this video. You can bet the song itself, even though a very good tune, would never have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for this video.

OK GO

OK GO was a signed band under a record contract for a couple of years, but that got them nowhere. They decided to record and release a video on their own, with a simple camcorder and a quirky ingenious dance routine.

This simple no-budget video got them much more popularity than years under a record label. They released the video without the label’s consent or knowledge. After millions of views, they followed up with another video – this time with some treadmills.

Whether they’ll become a powerhouse rock band or if they’ll forever known as a gimmick video dance band remains to be seen.

Bathtub IV

This story is a little different in that the video was not created by the musical act, but rather by a clever photographer/director who used a tilt shift technique to create a miniature world. He has a few videos like this with different unknown musicians.

This particular video got tons of play on the social media sites and has gotten more publicity for the photographer as well as for Megan Washington, whose music was used.

Saul Williams Releases His Album Online

Saul Williams is a local New York MC and poet and is little known to a mainstream audience. When he hooked up with Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) to produce his album “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust,” the music sounded quite original and a little off-the-wall for the mainstream crowd.

Trent Reznor was on the outs with his own record company at the time, and was openly outspoken about the music business model as a whole. So they decided to do something different with this album and release it online only as an MP3 download and give a listener the choice: Download lower quality MP3’s for free, or pay $5 and download the higher quality MP3’s while supporting the artist.

Even though some time later Reznor expressed that this particular experiment did not prove to be very successful (in terms of money made), I believe it still got Saul Williams a ton of new fans that he would never have gotten otherwise from a record company with such an experimental album.

Some people got his album for the music, while others who don’t really care for that style of music got it anyway to support the artist, simply because they hate the RIAA and the record industry. Tons more people got to hear his name because the story was blown up all over social media sites. So even though the album might not have sold as they expected, the publicity that was generated online alone was probably worth it.

United Breaks Guitars

Pretty cool story — what happens when United Airlines breaks your guitars? Write a song about it; better yet, shoot a funny video and put it on YouTube. People love funny videos and they hate big corporations, so this video turned out to be a big win for Sons of Maxwell, a group that no one has really heard of before.

Here’s the sequel of the video:

DJ Danger Mouse – Grey Album

Creating a mash-up between The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album into the Grey Album, DJ Danger Mouse got a big Internet following which catapulted his career. After the success of the Grey Album he formed Gnarles Barkley, produced the next Gorillaz album, and was nominated for a Grammy for Producer of the Year.

Furthermore, the album was used in a tug-of-war between record companies’ copyright laws and activists looking to change record labels’ practices.