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Backstage Interview With Rachel Masters

So maybe let's start off just telling the folks a little bit about Red Magnet. Um, what you guys do you what? Your specialties are that sort of stuff. Yeah, sure. Where Social marketing agency for Creative brands. And what makes me so excited about Creativelive is that you're working with creative entrepreneurs. So this is an audience that totally love. We've been working with folks like Duran Duran, Lincoln Park in Cuba's in the Music side of the House, but then also on the creative brands, working with Dodo case there, the makers of the high end tablet and IPhone covers um, and as Skye staler the fashion line chef Michael Nina, chef Bradley Ogden. So there's a lot of Social is a really great way for brands to connect with their fans, and we're all about helping them make that happen. Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about S O. Those are all great folks. You have some pretty established brands already. What advice can you give for maybe a little bit earlier stage company who are...

just starting out who I have? Ah, Facebook fan page with hopefully a couple 100 a couple 1000 fans, but are really trying to figure out social media strategies. And what are some of the basics that you wouldn't mind? Totally. So I would say, Just focus on one thing. Don't feel overwhelmed. So the first question to ask is, Where does your consumer, your audience, where do they like to hang out online? So if you are targeting moms, you know age is like 35 to 45. Facebook is a great option. If you are targeting tech influencers than Twitter is probably the best place to go and get started on that social platform and have a great editorial calendar and do it right and really, you know, double down and spend your time there versus worrying about Oh my God, what I'm gonna do on instagram what I'm gonna do on Vine like every single day, there's a new social network. Just do one thing. Do it right. Pick one spot, really investor time. Nail it, build a critical mass or an audience that it's actually Bill to contribute to the growth of your business as opposed to getting spread out to that. Exactly how do you evaluate success in that strategy? How do you know that the social media is a good return for you. So the whole game is changing completely, and you and I have had a lot of conversations around this. So it used to be that you would just see how many followers you had or how many likes on Facebook. But now it's going on the way this social networks are being devises, that someone could be talking about you but not following you. It's super easy for them to do that. So really, it's all about measuring engagement and how many people are actually mentioning you responding to you favorite in your tweets. But then even further down the marketing funnel, how Maney conversion events are you getting out of your social embodies the conversion of it. What do you mean by that? So that means, especially in technologies based for an early stage start up is in how many at how much traffic is coming from social to your website. So look at your Google analytics and see your your online referrals and see what's coming from Twitter and Facebook or whatever social platforms you're using. That's that's pretty easy, right? You, you set of analytics, go into the top referral sources, and it's gonna give you Facebook, Twitter, whatever else exactly. And Google and Alexis kind of amazing, because you can now even run certain social campaigns and tag them with with Google Analytics number. So I mean, you could really, really see where your traffic is coming from. The other thing is how maney email addresses are you able to build, get from your social and, um then finally, how many sales? So, yeah, so really, it's become part of just an extension of your website, kind of in that year trying to move people from the various networks of these outposts, direct them to your main hub, uh, and then, you know, convert whatever businesses that you're trying to do that it's, ah, spoken hub strategy. So the idea is to use all of the different social platforms as a spokes around the Web and then drive people into your hub. And then the other thing that you have to do is like once you have capture, that customer is get them to become your brand advocate. So what? How can you include social hooks into your product? So then, after someone buy something, then they can spread the word about you to their social network would be by special craft. What do you be more specific about that like social hooks and spread the word and give you a great example. Bab Bab Aziz, A company that did this really well and really blaze the path for the rest of us on this. So whenever you go to buy something on fab dot com, which they sell, like beautiful little design items you can, then they give you an option to say, Hey, show your friends on Facebook and Twitter or a Pinterest what you just bought, and then you can then say, Oh, look at these, you know, great little new cappuccino glasses I just bought and then share them with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. And then, you know, hopefully my friends will see that and go, My goodness, I never knew that Bob was having a sale of cute little cappuccino glasses, and they go and buy it. So, um, that's exactly how you get that nice virtuous cycle and social going on. Fantastic. Um, what is what's what's your favorite social network right now? I am so impressed with the job that Instagram did in their new video product. Really, I cannot wait to use it because the the readout from the Valley is fast follow and maybe, like, not so innovative. I think that with Instagram and the amount of traffic, I went to a bar mitzvah last weekend and I was watching like all the 13 year old kids and like what they were doing, all of them were on Instagram, and that's what the kids are using that they love. Looking at one simple photograph now with a 15 2nd video, I think that the video also looks really beautiful. The most motion stabilization that Instagram is integrated into their technology and then along with the filters is really cool. And I think that it's gonna be interesting. Uh, where they go with this? Sure. So it sounds like you really like the engagement opportunities that Instagram has. Um, tell me about the story telling that it kind of seems like the engagement is focused around a picture or a 2nd video. Yet you really concise and really on point with what your messages for that 11 thing right there can give me some examples of cool marketing executions that you've seen that you know, that provided awesome use of that platform completely. So yesterday at age did a great cover good, great article that showed all of the launch partners with Instagram on video. So, Lululemon, um, I have to admit, I am a fan. Um, they had this woman doing different yoga poses and behind her were different images from around Vancouver of like the totem poles and like the harbor and like some contemporary sculpture. And then in the background was the Lululemon headquarters with their logo on it and like and then she was like it was just like a flash of, like, all these different images around Vancouver with her doing the yoga pose. And it was like, Wow, that really, like, encapsulate the brand of Lululemon. And it's an easily share a bull engaging thing for their core audience. Yeah, and you really got a taste of knowing their brand, but also in Vancouver. And like a little fun, like after the whole spirit was fantastic. Sure eso we have a big creative community on creativelive photographers in particular. How what would in some ways, that photographers or designers might use Instagram, for example, or cell phone networks to to contribute to their local businesses. Fantastic question. So, photographers, you know, I know that there's a lot of sensitivity around something like Instagram. Like I'm not just gonna give away my work for free. And I totally understand that. I think one of things you need to get creative about is that your customers, when they're choosing to hire you, really want to get to know you because they really want to understand, like the service that you're gonna provide. So instead of maybe taking photographs that you would normally take for your business on instagram, take behind the scenes photographs like Show us like where you leave your, you know, put your cameras like, you know, in your home like shows how you pack up your bags, show us like you know, when you're in the photography supply store like you know, like what you're buying like show was like it would day in life, for you looks like so that your audience, like your potential customers, can get a better sense of, um, you who you are and what your brand is all about in the care that you take in the work that you do. That's interesting that you mention that that's essentially how are co founder Chase? Jarvis grew his super large audience was by sharing behind the seeds, seen stuff and helping educate other photographers about the tips and tricks that he was using to create Beautiful, one of a kind images. And so he was able to bring people into his world, provide value to them without giving away. You know, the big, beautiful work that brands would pay a lot of money for but providing different sorts of value to his community. And that community essentially was hugely important to the birth and success of creative life completely, which is really cool. Um, tell us it. So read magnet. Let's talk a little about like the team that you have and how, um, small businesses or medium size businesses can engage in best use. Ah, firm like yours, because the question is, how much do you do in house? How much do you outsource? Tell me a little bit about your business and how you run it on a day to day basis. Great question, and I think it's always evolving It's interesting running a service based industry becoming company, that I think a lot of photographers can totally understand that. So you know what? My co founder is really the yin to my yang. She is really an operations type person. She's very strategic and nature, Um and so that would make you. I'm the business development, marketing person, big ideas person. So, um, Latino, luckily like, is there keeping the tracks running on the train? And I'm, you know, coming up with all of the big crazy idea. So you know when we work with one of our clients. So, for example, uh, we've been working with Chef Bradley Ogden for a while, and he's about to open up eight restaurants in Texas and in Las Vegas. And here in California it they don't really their their team that's trying very quickly open up a ton of restaurants. They're very, very focused on their core business, so they just need a social strategy done well by people who know what they're talking about. And I think that that's really a challenge. And social is to find people who actually have a lot of experience. There's not a lot of us because it's such a new industry and they tend toe stay in house. Once you have a certain level of experience, you become a community manager and you kind of go from company to company and inside. And so the agency world is fairly limited, right? Exactly. And so, um, for an age for small business or a medium sized business, Teoh come to us and say, You know, we really need a thoughtful social strategy that we can actually implement. And we put a lot of loving care into a customized strategy for our clients so that they really have a road map of, you know how to balance the storytelling with the conversion events, which I actually advise on 80 20% 80% is round storytelling and relationship building and 20% of your social work should be around conversion events coming up with big campaign ideas so that you get people to actually engage like there's a big difference between getting people to see a tweet that, you know, I kind of remember and go that that's nice that creative lives in that tweet to me. You know, what are some engagement events even actually get people to spend 16 and 90 seconds with your brand a month, Um, and then give you their email address. Uh, and and then, you know, how are you gonna work with influence? Or so that they can then help amplify those campaign? Sure. So, uh, engagement and influencers do one thing really well, which is extend your message, Teoh their networks a swell. So it's That's, I assume, one of the reasons why engagement is potentially more important than just getting a bunch of likes completely. Yes. And influencers. You know, if you're a creative entrepreneur and you have a business, I think that what makes social network so special is that you can actually reach out to someone like guy Kawasaki. You know, you can and start tweeting at him. And if you do it and authentically wave and you should make sure you're providing value to him and you're actually sparking interest will engage back with you. I mean, that's how I met Porter Gale and ended up on creative. Why was through Twitter? I don't know if you know that, but we became friends through twitter, just to twitter. Yeah. So you so supporter Gail is one of our instructors. She just had a book. Launch your network. Is your net worth? She's going back to actually teach that class on Creativelive, I think next month. But you hear this story? Absolutely. I read an article. I knew that everyone thinks that, like, Twitter, engagement is so cheesy and dumb, but sounds like just the opposite for you. Well, so what happened? Waas, Um I kind of really admired her work a virgin America. And I read an article that she wrote an ad age about how some of her best business relationships had Kim come from Twitter. So I tweeted at her and I was like, We love to get together from coffee. Read this in the article and at age, you're open meeting people like random people like me on Twitter, and she was like, you know, you know, you hear it, she sent me her email address, and then we started following each other and engaging that way. And I had an email her a few times and *** for coffee. But he finally had coffee, and then I ended up in her book. So you did essentially a lot of things that she recommended, which was on her? Yeah, absolutely. You ran her playbook? Exactly. Worked well? Yeah, well, Port is an incredibly authentic person. Love her to death. Think she's incredible. But you had awareness of what she was doing. You were following her. You were a bit of a fan. And yeah, and you were aware of a piece of continent she had just published. You engage with her around that, um, and then you continue to follow up completely. I This is one of the things that we're doing here is we're trying, Teoh essentially put some of the secrets from silicon value out of the world. I don't know. This is the secret of Silicon Valley, but it's one thing that I get approached by kids who are just out of school all the time. And I, uh, don't always reply to the first email, and I don't sometimes replied a second email and you have to stick with it. You have to continue to remind that person in an authentic way, potentially that you know, they're yet to recognize there were really busy. It's so hard, Teoh, because you feel like you're being a nudge and you don't want to be annoying to that person. But again, we're all living between so many different screens and living very busy lives so that if you can really again, like I said, you said that authentically figure out how to say, Hey, just following up with you are tweeting at that person or seeing them an article that you think would be of interest. It really is wonderful. And I think that a lot of brands are forgetting to use social network platforms like Twitter and Facebook in that way. I think a lot of what I'm saying is that brands are just broadcasting information out to people and not posting like the ad age article on INSTAGRAM videos asking a question. Hey, how does this inspire you? It's so it's one way value exchange. Check out our new product, check out how much broader do and you know it's all about us. Whereas so for networking, you importer. It was a two way exchange. Um, So what are some examples of how you know brands can provide value to their users through through social networks? Yeah, I mean, so a lot of what we've been doing with Dodo case is really helping them think about who who is the ideal date okays customer and doing a profile on them. So, for example, Brit Morin from Britain Company, she is an amazing entrepreneur. She's like Silicon into the Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley, and she's one of their creative corner people. And so we're working with them to highlight her on their blawg and then also have her do a pin board and and so on and so forth and then have heard to design her own dodo case line is sort of the idea behind all of that. So it helps you understand how you can use their product. And it could make you smarter and better by seeing how someone else uses it. Terrific. Do we have any questions from the audience for Rachel? I could keep going, but does anyone back here have any specific lots of questions? Yeah, uh, grab a microphone so that we can, uh, the entire Internet can hear what you're asking about. Yeah, sounds good. So my question is around a lot of entrepreneurs or I should say so much winners. Well, kind of build a social media brand for themselves while us some don't invest their efforts on that. I would love to hear your opinion on I guess the importance of not only building a brand for your business but also a tech fund rest while building your own personal brand is a hot topic for many of us because you're so busy building a business, why do you want to put in the effort of also building your personal brand? And then is one gonna sort of clutter? The other is something that I have definitely struggled with a lot for myself, but I think that at the end of the day, your personal brand you're always going to have. And so it is also a Your company is, has a strong brand, but it can never be quite as personal and authentically you as you are. And people want to engage with you. It's a It's a very strong way for you to always take that from company to company. And as your career evolves, would you would you go as far to say that your network is your net worth? I believe that I mean, my relationship with Porter is definitely, um, been very helpful from a net worth perspective. So and it's it's kind of amazing how in Silicon Valley, you know, I've been in the technology business in 2000 and one, and how people that I met in 2001 are still so helpful to me today. Yeah, and come back to my life in so many different ways and your career really evolved together. So I think that the more you can get out there and it's so hard when you have a startup, Teoh say, Okay, I'm gonna go out there like twice a week and try to learn something new and meet some new people. It's a It's a great thing to do. We work actually at a company called in the building called the We Work Building, which is in a co co working space. We have our own office, but there's like four different start ups down or Hall, and that's just a really great way to constantly be ableto got what's best around Silicon Valley, which is all the creativity and all the people thinking about new things. And I'm just from our neighbors. That book Fresh have learned a ton about how to build a fantastic enterprise software application. Not sure if we'll ever do that, but it makes me, uh, makes me think about social and new and different ways to I think that's ah important. A concept that we consorted extrapolated for local communities all across the country that local businesses everywhere are gonna have different audiences in the same geographic area and that you can engage with one another. Teoh amplify the kind of community that you have collectively. So you could be a small local business in Toledo, Ohio. Ah, cupcake shop or whatever. And by engaging with other businesses in your local community, you can all you all kind of come up together and share local interesting stuff about what's awesome and happening in Toledo completely. And one of the things I find very inspiring is the whole SF made group of companies. So it's Dodo case and rickshaw and beta brands. So they're all companies that are manufacturing in San Francisco, one of the most crazy real estate markets, and all of these companies are choosing to make their products here, and they help support each other, and they all have open houses on the same evening and you can go from company to company. They dio indie craft marks together along with smaller artisans. And I think also we were able to form a collective around that and have a social presence and all build off of each other. It's a really great thing to Dio, and and so you're talking about a shared online community that represents a actual physical local community. They do events together. They, you know, they're building a critical mass of local consumers who all sort of, uh, have the same mindset. Things locally built, Uh, not so handmade. But you really care about about local products completely. So a lot of businesses in Detroit have done that and have not seen a lot of success. AUSTIN, Texas. Same thing, and also the bars and clubs and the Sunset Strip in Hollywood did that. There you go. And so if you're a photographer, every business loves to have photos taken of them completely. You could be at the hub of a local community, helping you take great pictures and share one another. And those pictures get then get seen by a letter. Larger local audience were just kind of spitballing here, but You know, social networks reflect real world communities. Having those real world communities are a great way to sort of reinforce what you do online completely and use a smart hashtag right so that everyone in that local community can then find those photographs and then share them with and then really encourage them to share them with all of their followers. Now, it's a shared marketing campaign across large, large audiences. Um, any final questions for Rachel? Yes, but we have a way of the microphone Backer, High mining Kim. I go by Kim on Twitter que I am. Wow, a friend of Porter. She's wonderful. Although our schedules are so busy, we don't have an often had a chance to sit down. But I have one quick question. People often approached me for influenced every type of projects. And I'm watching. How were they finding me, like, how do you track down influencers there is that trade secret, or is that something that you can reveal to this audience? All right, so this really is one of my secrets, Valley. I will share it with on the creative live audience. So I actually, uh, I spend a lot of time and thought around approaching influencers. Today, our company has never paid an influence or to do anything on the behalf of one of our clients. I think that that will probably change at some point because of the marketplace. But I think that when you approach and influence or you're gonna get a much better authentic post that their audience, we really wanted to read if you provide a fantastic experience for them. And one of the things that I'm really interested in is instead of going to people who have, like, you know, a 1,000,000 follower for $500,000 unless they already know them finding the influencers of influencers. And so I use this tool called Tweet Def and I will plug in. Let's say I am going after Tech entrepreneurs. I would plug in Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Porter Gale, and then tweet. Def shows you all of the people who they who they have in common that they follow. And that's a really great way to surface the influencers of influencers. And it's something I use over and over again for all of our clients, and it's free uses the twitter AP I tweet. If yeah, are you tweet If you can't find it, you know, tweet at me and masters 212 and I'll send you the link. So it's masters to one to, uh, if people are interested in your agency. Red magnet media dot com dot com A big round of applause for Rachel Masters