Blue Helm

The Jonas Brothers performed in 2009's Stadium of Fire.

Blue Helm is proud to work with America’s Freedom Festival at Provo, a nonprofit group that dedicates itself to promoting family, freedom, God and country. One of the Freedom Festival’s great annual events is the Stadium of Fire, an awesome celebration every 4th of July featuring past performers like the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, the Beach Boys, Blue Man Group and the Osmonds. This year, Blue Helm has sponsored the festival’s successful Vote the Voice campaign—an opportunity for Facebook and Twitter fans to recommend who they would like to see perform in a future Stadium of Fire event. Here’s the most recent press release we sent out to Utah’s media about the campaign:

Provo, Utah – November 17, 2009 - America’s Freedom Festival at Provo, in partnership with Blue Helm Communications, officially released today the final online poll for the Stadium of Fire’s Vote the Voice event. After aggressive grassroots and viral lobbying among thousands of fans, the community may now choose between David Archuleta, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Bon Jovi and Eric Dodge to become a potential performer in a future Stadium of Fire celebration.

Fans must visit the Freedom Festival’s Facebook page to access a link to the new online ballot. Over 15,000 votes have been cast since October 15 to narrow the list of favorite contenders to five. The new online poll of five names is comprised of leading nominees from the last two phases of the Freedom Festival’s Vote the Voice campaign—an energetic and ongoing vote held since September on the festival’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

A unique example of how Vote the Voice has influenced the Freedom Festival’s consideration of future performers is the inclusion of southern Utah country singer Eric Dodge in the final five. The Freedom Festival was unaware of his enormous popularity among many Utah residents before Vote the Voice began. Through Facebook, Twitter and Eric Dodge’s website, fans have coordinated and lobbied to vote in strong numbers, thus securing his name among other, better-known contenders in the final five.

In another distinctive use of social media campaigning, David Archuleta’s fans dominated Twitter discussions about Vote the Voice. Their lobbying for the American Idol runner-up was so relentless, one of the largest David Archuleta fan pages on Twitter took notice and encouraged its thousands of followers to get involved.

Members of the community are encouraged to visit the Freedom Festival’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/freedomfestival to learn more about how to vote for their favorite performers. Fans can also stay up to date with Vote the Voice on Twitter at www.twitter.com/freedmfestprovo.

When the Freedom Festival tallies all the votes at the end of the year, it will do its very best to book its fans’ favorite performer for a future Stadium of Fire event. No guarantee of any future performer, despite the outcome of the vote, can be made.

Photo By:Ian Britton

Writing the very first post of a brand new blog can be rather intimidating. I have a lot on my mind as I type: social media’s controversial evolution, blogging ethics, Twitter tech glitches, Phil Collins, etc. So instead of trying to make this first post about something complex and multifaceted (like Phil Collins), I will leave you with a straightforward description of what our blog will contain and why I believe it will be valuable to you.

Peter M. Leschak, an accomplished Minnesota author, said: “All of us are watchers—of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway—but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.”

Here at Blue Helm we observe. We strive to see the whole social media picture. We tirelessly monitor what’s going on in the world of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, Digg….you get the idea.

After we observe, we investigate and evaluate. We’ll recommend what social media trends or crazes are worth your attention. And we’ll offer helpful analysis and how-to advice for individual professionals and companies who want to use social media as a valuable marketing tool. Let me stress the word valuable. Social media offers so much marketing potential and we’ll do our best to make this blog a genuine, interesting and worthwhile blog that addresses all your social media questions and needs. We also want our blog to be a forum where you can engage and give us your thoughts, questions and opinions. Talk to us and we’ll talk back.

For example, let’s pretend your name happens to be, oh I don’t know, Phil Collins. And your job is, let’s imagine, an internationally-renowned jumbo-rock star. Blue Helm’s blog would be a great place for you to visit and discover valuable social media marketing tips for your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your blog or any other social media network that would be beneficial to your business. You may even wake up one morning to find a ‘Social Media Tips for Jumbo-Rock Stars’ blog post in your Google Reader. You could submit feedback or questions and even write a #1 hit single about how awesome Blue Helm is. That’s the kind of value you can expect from us.

Jumping into the world of social media is quite an adventure—with priceless treasures found along the journey. We hope you’ll consider this blog the map to get you where you need to go.

Stay posted. More to come…