Incubus Prepares to Lay Upon the Digital World
We’re very excited to welcome Incubus to the growing list of multi-platinum rock stars represented here at Red Magnet Media.
Brandon, Mike, Chris, Jose and Ben are releasing their first album of new material in five years, appropriately titled If Not Now, When? in July. We love how enthusiastic this band is about digital media, and how many great ideas they’ve already been working on. They’re passionate about building and nurturing a community among their fans and finding new ways to give back to the fan base that has meant so much to them throughout their career. We’re honored to be a part of the team that gets to make that happen.
Stay tuned to IncubusHQ, @incubusband and the Incubus fan page on Facebook for an inside look at the band and details on some very cool events throughout the summer.
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How to Succeed in Social Media without Actually Hiring Us
Kidding, kidding. Of course you have to hire us. But in case you haven’t gotten around to that yet, we’re honored and excited to be curating the social media workshop at the NARM Convention on May 12 from 2-5pm in Los Angeles.
This three-hour workshop will start with a condensed version of the social media strategy workshop we’ve used to help clients like Linkin Park and Duran Duran increase their Facebook following by 50% in two months. It includes an overview of the tools and best practices for growing followers and engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and up-and-coming social networks like Instagram, Tumblr and Soundtracking. It’s the next-best thing to having us in your office working directly with your team.
Next, we’ll let some of the best Facebook companies on the market introduce themselves to you in a panel with Mike McGinley from CitizenNet, Chris Wiltsee from RootMusic and Alex Mouldovan from CrowdFactory. We’ll hear about how social games can boost your brand from Blake Commagere, Founder of DeezGames and creator of Facebook’s Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves games. Finally, we’ll grill the best social media minds from other entertainment and consumer gooeds verticals about what they’re doing right and how the music industry can learn from their successes and missteps.
We’re really looking forward to this event and hope to see you there.
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Join Rachel Masters for a Conversation on Social Media Success at SF MusicTech
The SF MusicTech Summit is one of our favorite conferences of the year. It’s right here in our home base of San Francisco, and everything about it captures the collaborative and open spirit of the city. The schedule is packed with informative discussions from the make-it-happen people on the bleeding edge of music and tech. Every year we’re impressed with the music-related start-ups we see from all over the world, and we make new friends from the music labels, artist management and music retailers who are ready to change the way consumers experience music. The conference is one of the many ways we stay up-to-speed on the latest and greatest products and services for our clients in the music and entertainment worlds.
This year, we’re excited to announce that our agency’s co-founder, Rachel Masters, will be hosting the Community Conversation on Using Social Media. While Rachel certainly has plenty pearls of wisdom for anyone looking to jump-start the social media of an entertainment brand, she wants this session to be as interactive as possible. If you have a great example of how you’ve used social media to boost a music brand or an Artist, come on by and contribute to the conversation. If you’d like your experience highlighted during the conversation, shoot her an email at rachel AT redmagnetmedia DOT com, and make sure to include your Twitter handle.
If you haven’t registered yet but you’d like to attend the conference, please be our guest. Literally. You can get 20% off your ticket price by registering here as a guest of Rachel and Red Magnet Media.
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New Digital Partnership: Flipboard + Duran Duran
Over the weekend, our client Duran Duran tweeted their excitement to be part of Flipboard’s live magazine at SXSW. This tweet caught the attention of our colleague Leonard Chen, who is covering SXSW for Billboard.biz. Leonard emailed me asking if I knew anything about this and I responded: Yes—it is part of a bigger partnership that we created with Flipboard and that if he liked we’d give him the scoop.
The end result is Billboard’s fantastic coverage of Duran Duran’s partnership with Flipboard. One of the joys of working with Duran Duran is that the band is open to innovating in creative ways with new digital products and services. We are thrilled to be working with Flipboard, a product we love and use daily, to create a digital concert program for the modern era that documents Duran Duran’s time on the road.
Creating innovative digital partnerships is one of our focuses at Red Magnet Media. We are part of the fabric of Silicon Valley and are always looking for great partners like the wonderful team at Flipboard.
If you have any great ideas on how to work with our clients, please get in touch!
The full article from Billboard.biz:
Flipboard, developer of what it calls the world’s first “social magazine” for the iPad (and, this summer, the iPhone), is aiming big. The company, based in Palo Alto, Ca., says it wants nothing less than to completely transform the way we consume content. In the process, and core to their business model, they hope to bring what CEO and co-founder Mike McCue described as the elegance and storytelling of print advertising to the digital world.
In a standing room-only session at SxSWi on Saturday, McCue was interviewed by AllThingD’s Kara Swisher and described his vision for Flipboard: to partner with publishers and other content creators to “connect readers with the products they love.”
“The world of publishing and content consumption is going through transformation like we’ve never seen before,” he said, noting that he’s aiming for a “combination of print ideals with real-time web capabilities – creating something totally new.”
One way of furthering that vision was announced via Twitter during the panel, although it wasn’t mentioned by McCue: Duran Duran will be taking part in Flipboard’s “live magazine” for an interview during SXSW at a time to be announced. Also, starting on Friday, Flipboard will offer a Duran Duran-featured section that will show the band’s Twitter feeds in a magazine-style format.
“Flipboard turns Duran Duran’s, Simon Le Bon’s and John Taylor’s Twitter feeds into a digital flip-able magazine available only on Flipboard,” said Rachel Masters of Red Magnet Media, a San Francisco-based social media/digital strategy consultant working closely with Duran Duran on their digital marketing efforts. “Their section will be constantly updated by new tweets. We view this as a digital concert program for the modern era that documents Duran Duran’s time on the road that is always-on and very easy to update with new content. The goal is to leverage the iPad’s unique capabilities to fully capture the band’s experience at SxSW and will continue as Duran Duran starts its world tour.”
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Reflections on MIDEM 2011
I just came back from my third MIDEM conference. As mentioned by my friends Ian Rogers of Topspin Media and Ian Hogarth of Songkick, this year the focus of MIDEM attendees was business — specifically, how we can work together to create a regenerated and vibrant music industry through the sales of music, merchandise concert tickets, sponsorships and new technology products services.
This year was a real turning point for music tech startups. I loved seeing music tech startups deep in conversation with major label C-Level executives and artist managers at Cafe Mocha, Cafe Roman and at the Majestic Hotel. MIDEMNet and MIDEM weren’t two separate conferences happening at the same time; the two events are beginning to mesh attendees and after-conference conversations. In fact, I can see that maybe in three to five years it will all just be one conference.
A great example of this was the dinner that Red Magnet Media, RootMusic and SongKick sponsored. We had an amazing group of attendees such as Vince Bannon of Getty Images, Ali Rivera of YouTube, Ping Ho of Warner Music Group, Mathieu Drouin of Crystal Math Music Group, Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment, and Saul Klein of Index Ventures. The conversation at dinner ranged from the future of music licensing to cool new holographic video technology to how companies like MerchLuv can make special objects of desire through artistic merchandise.
This dinner was so inspiring that Athena and I are hoping to host a series of dinners or salons on the intersection of creative brands and digital technology opportunities. In addition to music, we are very interested in possibilities around fashion, travel, wellness/fitness and of course food and wine. What would you like to get a bunch of interesting people around a table to chat about?
Wrap Up from Rachel’s Talk at MIDEM
Rachel has been at MIDEM the last few days and just did her talk with Aaron Ray, Partner at The Collective, on Linkin Park’s digital transformation.
The MIDEM blog did a write up about their talk. It opens with:
“Masters (left), the architect of Linkin Park’s digital strategy, which helped the American superband release their fourth number-one record and launch a successful international tour in 2010, said: ‘One lesson I’ve learned is that, when you’re doing things for the first time with early-stage technology companies, things go squiggly. Always have a plan B.’
In the event, Masters’ plan A more than did the business. Linkin Park’s branded social network now has over 140,000 members and the band’s Facebook friends have skyrocketed to 22 million from a ‘mere’ 1.5 million a year ago.”
Read the full blog post here. Rachel is now at DLD in Munich and will be back later this week with her thoughts from the conference.
Photo Credit: MIDEMBlog
Introducing the Node
We’ve been heads down focused on launching the Node, a private social network for creative nerds we created with Chris Hardwick. It’s been a month since the launch and we’re incredibly excited about the community that is forming. On the Node, people are nerdsourcing (think crowdsourcing for nerds), meme-streaming (creating awesome content around a theme) and conversing around all things Nerdy.
Here’s an example of what we’ve been seeing about the Node on Twitter: 
We’ll post more details once it’s out of beta.
Want in? Comment below and we’ll send you a private invitation.
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Hello!
Hi and welcome. We are Red Magnet Media, a boutique digital strategy firm with expertise in successfully helping entertainers, media companies and artisanal brands create effective social media presences.
We are, at our core, passionate community builders. Nothing makes us happier than to see people connecting online over something they care about, responding thoughtfully to a blog post, or contributing their thoughts to a forum or Twitter. Helping brands and entertainers tell their stories and connect with their audiences in a genuine way is what gets us up in the morning.
We believe that this a special time on the web. People have access to so many different ways of expressing themselves and building deep relationships with Artists, brands and experts that they admire. The ability to connect and share will only grow in the next few years.
At the same time, the nature of sales and marketing is dramatically changing. A brand can no longer just buy a bunch of one-way conversation ads. In order to break through the digital noise of videos, blogs, status updates, films, music and games, an Artist or brand must develop a deep relationship with their customer or fan.
This isn’t easy stuff and it always isn’t pretty. That’s why we’re here to help. After overseeing the launch of over 1.4 million social networks in our previous roles at Ning including 50 Cent’s Thisis50, Picken’s Plan and Brooklyn Art Project, we kept seeing and hearing that people needed help launching and growing their digital communities online.
Today we work with Hearst Corporation, Linkin Park, Chris Hardwick, Scribble Press and Kriser’s Pets on their digital strategies. We believe your digital strategy should be customized to help you achieve your specific goals. We apply our expertise to help you expand your audience online and increase audience engagement by curating your community, running contests, and producing exclusive content.
The purpose of this blog is to share a few of our lessons learned along the way starting with launching the first channel on YouTube in 2006 (trivia contest: Which Artist/Celebrity had the first YouTube Channel? The first person to get the answer right wins a prize). We will share with you best practices on creating an engaging online presence. Finally, we’ll feature fantastic products and services that make our job of building digital communities easier and more awesome.
Thanks for taking a read. We look forward to having an ongoing conversation with you and learning along the way.
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