Let L2P And SPL Maximize ROI On Your Online And Social Marketing

By rlindquist on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 5:28pm

Live2Play and SoundProLive are all about finding the next “insanely great thing” in online publishing. We create original content and curate content from around the Web and package it for musicians and bands (Live2Play) and audio pros (SoundProLive).

We do engagement. We do interactive. We do video. We do lots and lots of social networking both for ourselves and for our sponsors.
We have created a new, patented format for online publications dubbed “Active eZines” that brings the familiar magazine format into the 21st century with content and ads that work on any desktop, laptop or mobile device and that includes stuff print can never do including video embedded in EVERY piece of content including all ads.

Connecting To Your Audience:

So, Who are we? Actually, that is probably a more important question. Just like anyone can buy gear and claim to be a band or sound company, having cool technology and formats are just part of the equation. It’s not the car, it’s the driver. Here are OUR drivers:

Robert "Bob" Lindquist: Sax player, broadcaster, DJ, writer, publisher, teller of corny jokes and purveyor of bad (but funny) puns. He founded and published Mobile Beat Magazine and started Singer&Musician Magazine (the print predecessor of Live2Play) more than a decade ago. While most publishers were busy trying to protect their outdated business and distribution models, he was looking to the future and giving away PDF versions of Singer&Musician long before any other publication in the MI or Pro Audio markets.

Bill Evans: AKA The Reverend. Guitar player. Singer. Sound guy. Pontificating pundit pain in the patoot. He was the editor of GIG magazine for bands and musicians from ’95 until ’02 and more recently the founding editor of Front of House magazine from ’02 until March of 2011. He has been pushing at the confines of the publishing envelope in ways that have both puzzled and pissed off publishers (including the ones he worked for) since ’94. He is the author of Live Sound Fundamentals and co-author with GIG founding editor/publisher Quint Randle of Making Money Making Music: The Musicians’ Guide To Cover Gigs. For some reason he can’t explain, some of the best audio engineers in the world actually welcome him at their shows.

Linda Evans: Photographer. Graphic designer. Artist. Solver of seemingly impossible situations. Social Network Queen. Quite often the voice of reason in a group of lunatics who come up with an idea a minute. She is known among the entertainment community of Las Vegas and in photo pits from Coachella to Roskilde as the Photo Diva. She has been a publishing pro since the tools of the trade included border tape, ruby lith and molten wax and has successfully made the transition to Photoshop, iPads and PHP. Award-winning copyeditor. She has guided the look and feel of Live2Play since it was still a magazine called Singer&Musician and was present at the birth of SoundProLive. And she does it all while putting up with The Rev. for going on 24 years.

Andrea Bensmiller: Wicked good singer. Guitar player. Bassist. Polished writer and purveyor of the progressive POV. Major league geek. Artist. One of the rare cases where the geek and the artist actually reside in the same body and mind and manage to not only co-exist but to feed each other. She has created and maintained big databases for “straight” businesses by day while evenings were spent as part of a groundbreaking all-female electronic quartet called Jariya. Berklee College of Music grad. Teacher. Full-time working player in the live entertainment capital of the world. She has unblocked the ears of stuck-in-the-‘70s musicians and widened the thought horizons of followers all over the Web. When the team gets tired she is usually the one still pushing them up the hill.

Active Marketing™ - What It Is and How It Works

The dominant digital paradigm has migrated from Search to Social. Your potential customers are now far more likely to use social networks to gather information and get opinions on your products than they are to “Google it.”

This is especially true of younger users whose brand loyalties are not yet set in stone. These are the people who will determine your success in the coming years and decades. The move away from passive media (such as print) in favor of the online world of immediate information and entertainment is the biggest change in the direct delivery of information since Guttenberg, and it's your customers who are driving this change.

Active Marketing™ combines the power of many social networks and the immediacy of "the Web," with trusted third-party content to focus buyers directly on information, news and reviews of YOUR products. It's Exponential Marketing and this short video will show you just how fast and effective it is.

How It Works The Level 11 Media (LIve2Play and SoundProLive) Active Marketing™ program is made possible by a lot of prep work—more than five years building fans, followers and connections on multiple networks under many entities, both branded and personal. Our content creators cover any topic or product they believe will interest their users, and when those topics or products focus on a Network Sponsor, multiple notifications and teasers to that content go out to more than 61K social network connections. The resulting traffic—direct to this featured content—happens right before your eyes with long term benefits which are evident over periods of weeks and months. On average, content with Active Marketing™ gets 11 times the number of reads compared to content without the Active Marketing™ push. Watch this one minute demo and see the exponential power of Active Marketing™

Active Marketing In Action

Active Marketing Needs Active Content

iTunes has eclipsed music stores and put chains like Tower Records and even the Virgin Megastores out of business. Borders is toast as Amazon has become the biggest bookseller in the world and those books are increasingly of the electronic, no paper, no ink variety. Go to any public place from a movie theatre to a house of worship and look around. You’ll see most of the kids — and a good number of the adults — are texting, posting Facebook updates and playing games on smartphones, iPads and other mobile devices.
Users become less interested by the day in static, text-only content. That is why every piece of content in the Live2Play and SoundProLive patent-pending Active eZines includes embedded rich media with video, audio and Web pages. That includes both articles AND ads. And, all of that rich content is instantly sharable via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with more on the way. Oh, and it can all be instantly translated into 20 different languages. Not your daddy’s print magazine...

Our proprietary Gear Hunter search model allows visitors to our Web pages to find YouTube videos, a Wikipedia entry and even Amazon listing and eBay auctions on any piece of music or audio gear. We also include links in our gear reviews to reviews from other sources. So Live2Play and SoundProLive readers can find out what we think about your gear including video of it in use. Then without leaving the page they can get other opinions, see other videos, get more info via the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world and even arrange to buy it.

Again, check out the video. And then click on the rate card to choose the sponsorship package that works best for you. We’re anxious to have you join us in defining the future of media and marketing. It’s all about active...