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BET Unveils Fandemonium Award to Measure Artists’ Online Clout

BET is launching a new award category that focuses on the online and mobile power. It will debut at this year’s BET Awards on Sunday, June 27th. In a two-week promotion on 106 & Park followers of Trey Songz, Chris Brown, Justin Beiber, and Nicki Minaj will compete to push their artist to the top using the AOL Lifestream social aggregator.

“Today’s successful artists don’t just make hits, they create movements where people can participate and connect with them in ways like never before. This award pays homage to the digitally engaged fans, and we’re excited to partner with AOL to amplify our audience’s voice at the BET AWARDS ’10. Over the past year, BET has experienced tremendous growth across online and mobile platforms and this partnership fits perfectly with our strategy to be right at the pulse of entertainment culture and also drive it.” -Denmark West, President of Digital at BET Networks

Fans will be able to leverage the power of AOL Lifestream to cast their votes by posting updates related to their favorite artists across sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, and FourSquare. With one single update, they can populate their entire online social world.

Viewers will be able to watch 106 & Park weekdays at 6:00pm to get information on the daily challenge. They will also be able to check the status of their artist of choice. Challenges will be centered around BET.com and BET mobile, while also including activities on other networks like Facebook and Twitter. Wherever the challenge is located, you can always see what’s going on at lifestream.aol.com/bet, which will collect everything in one place. AOL will also promote the BET Awards ’10 across their various online portals like Black Voices, AOL Music, PopEater and the AOL homepage.

These artists were chosen based on their existing rabid fan bases and star power in the industry. We have never seen an award category that is so directly tied to fan’s behavior online. Artists are usually grateful for their fan base, but the Fandemonium category will make it abundantly clear which artists have the most clout in new media. It is good to see an entity that focuses on the black community and black culture integrate old media and new media in this way.

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How To Control the Online Discussion with Google Moderator

Google Moderator is a feature that has allowed some pretty big names to have discussions with their audience without chaos ensuing. It provides a controlled environment where viewers on YouTube can ask questions and, if their question is popular among other Youtubers, get it voted up and answered. It’s like your own personal version of Digg…with video. Now, it’s available to all users.

Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time.

Moderator was used in discussions on YouTube with Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It’s also been used to facilitate discussion about the future of the African continent and who is the best slam dunker not in the NBA. While YouTube has made updates to the commenting system to make it more manageable and inviting, it’s still difficult to have any type of meaningful discussion within the comments. The noise easily drowns out the signal. Google moderator turns the tables in your favor.

Your first step is to add the Moderator module to your YouTube Channel. Just open the Modules drop down from your channel page and check the Moderator box (don’t forget to Save Changes).

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The next step is to create your first series. This refers to the entire discussion thread. Your Title is where you ask your community for questions, ideas, or suggestions on some topic. The Description allows you to got a little more in-depth as to what you want from your audience. You can optionally include a link to a YouTube video here if you are more comfortable expressing yourself on camera or need to attach related video content. One thing to note is that you can actually specify whether users will submit mostly questions, ideas, or suggestions. You can also specify start and end times for the series if it coincides with an actual event or you just want to limit responses.

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Each user response can also have a video link attached. There is no way to comment on individual post, which helps to keep things clean and focused. The only way a viewer can give feedback is by giving an item a thumbs up/down. Those items that get the most positive attention float to the top so that you can provide a video response.

Besides being a great way to get user feedback on serious issues, this is a great feature for YouTube personalities that thrive by entertaining or helping their audience. It will be easier to crowdsource your audience. Whether it’s a certain song they want to see performed, some problem that needs a solution, or some type of challenge they want to see completed. A great way to keep the good content flowing.

How will you use Google Moderator?