WHY DIGITAL STRATEGY and WHY CHIME

An artist's relationship with their fans has always been paramount. As the majority of this interaction continues to move online, so does the importance of developing and maintaining a solid digital strategy that embodies the right personality and tone. Equally crucial is having someone to reliably support and manage these activities. Chime Interactive is uniquely positioned to help you close the gap online between artist and fan by providing the ideas and tools to create meaningful and engaging online fan relationships that in turn support reaching your goals, be they marketing, commerce, or other. Chime understands how to bridge the art of music and the geekiness of digital technologies so you don't have to.

We take a high level look at your objectives and from there develop the best digital strategy to achieve those goals. Our solutions leverage our own products and services as well as tapping the best of industry partners, providing more value to the fans while also supporting artists' activities. Our services support you in many ways - from web site development and social media management to original video content and exploring new revenue models.

CHIME PRODUCTS and SERVICES

All products and services are tailored to each artist's goals and activities. Chime's in-house capabilities include not only "big idea" generation, but also production. We offer the following services and products to create different ways for fans to further connect with artists in unique ways.

But it doesn't end there. Building a new web site or online campaign doesn't stop when production is complete — that is when fan engagement begins. Chime has extensive skills at managing ongoing fan relationships through regular social network and web site publishing, monitoring, and interaction.

DIGITAL STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

We perform a large picture analysis of your current online presence, discuss your desired overall goals, and then develop a digital strategy that supports those goals and also innovates new opportunities. Typical goals include increasing audience size, driving merchandise and tour sales, making it easy for fans to connect where they feel most comfortable, and providing fans a way to get closer to the artist (without it feeling too close for the artist). The following services provide an example of what most people select, and we will create a unique plan to support you.

WEB SITE ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN and DEVELOPMENT

Chime can create a highly interactive fan oriented website with community tools that deepen the relationship with the most engaged fans. The stronger the relationship, the more opportunities there are to promote merchandise offers in a natural way. The web site is the hub of an artist's online world and all other activities and social networks always drive traffic back to it where it can be managed and directed where desired.

VIDEO - CONCEPTS, DIRECTING and PRODUCTION

Chime has a network of video professionals that can be as small a single person crew to go on the road or as large as a full scale live concert capture and broadcast. Central to all video content is creating concepts that suit the artist's personality and can also support other traditional marketing channels.

Chime has created original music video concepts, produced remote multi-camera live webcasts, created customized behind-the-scenes documentary podcasts on the recording of albums and touring activities, as well as commercially released DVDs.

Other Examples

• Mobile (iPhone) apps
• Live Webcasts and Interactive Chats
• Fan contests and giveaways
• Email Marketing
• Commerce Solutions

CONTENT CREATION (Artist, Fans, Chime)

Whether delivering content to fans via the official web site or via social media partners (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc), it is important to avoid the problem of "feast or famine". Chime helps you plan out content distribution ahead of time so fans are neither overloaded, nor ignored. Chime's approach combines artist-generated content with campaign-specific content and then folds in fan and press/media generated content. We have found when combining them all, it is then easy to schedule regular updates to the fans that keeps them engaged and also drives viral sharing and greater awareness. This also makes it possible to reduce the demands for an artist's time by capturing batches of content at one sitting that can be rolled out over the course of weeks or months.

Here are just a few examples of previous campaigns:

New Album Content (Awareness and Interest)

• Podcasts - per song podcast rolled out in the weeks leading up to release that typically also culminate in a listening party for the album
• EPK - electronic press kits
• Webisodes - longer form, more personal, more in-depth, involves more creativity on production/direction - tells a story

Engagement Content

• Tour - on the road coverage, inside reports, photos, videos, stories, road reports, blog posts
• Contests, Giveaways and Games
• UGC - (User Generated Content) - reviews, videos, and photos from shows, blogs

Community Content (for Energizing and Monetizing Fan Base)

• Traditional merchandise packages and bonus material
• Live DVDs - creative repurposing of live webcasts into direct-to-fan packages (or exclusive to fan club as an upsell)
• New exclusive behind the scenes content

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

Social media management provides dedicated staff to discuss, plan, and publish content on a regular basis to all of your networks. We work with you to plan (and adhere to) a schedule based on upcoming activities (tour, album cycle, media appearances, etc), focusing on ensuring a regular stream of news that keeps fans engaged (as opposed to a feast or famine approach). We also keep an ear on your networks, making sure that your fans feel heard and responded to.

The following services are included as part of Basic Social Media Management:

• Brand monitoring. We scour the web to make sure any mention of your band is evaluated and turned into news and media updates and published throughout all your networks, as appropriate. This results in maintaining ownership of the fan relationship as they realize your web site and network pages are the place to get all band-related news first.
• Updating web site with tour, news, & media items
• Updating & monitoring of networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube
• Monthly network reports showing your increase in fans and which posts generated the greatest response.
• Bi-weekly meetings to check in on new happenings and news for update schedule

REPORTING and ANALYTICS

Throughout all projects, we capture statistical and demographic information about the fans and their activities and create reports to help measure our success.