Seven years ago Emir Mani jointly launched music and entertainment marketing business Carbon Music. The company created branded music and entertainment promotions in the form of CDs, DVDs and digital downloads. Three years ago, Mani and his partners decided to diversify and re-launched as Rocketman Media, a boutique agency that brings influential bloggers together with brands.

Today, Rocketman Media matches bloggers to relevant products and initiatives while giving brands a way to reach a specialised social media audience. Mani talks to SMK about the challenges of establishing a new business model and the importance of maintaining integrity for brands and bloggers.

The brand must fit the blogger

Emir explains the process of setting up Rocketman. “We wanted to find a way to work and collaborate with influential bloggers. It was about trying to support the aspirations of bloggers and give them what they want: a better site and in return we will try to monetise their site in a way they're comfortable with.”

Mani and his team do this by establishing which brands their bloggers are interested in covering. He says “There’s a partnership between ourselves and the blogger. We’ll come up with 70% of the idea, so it’s almost a beta type concept that we’ll work on together to come up with a way it will fit on their site.”

Conversations and community

“The idea is to fuel conversations and interactions and direct traffic to people who want more information. It’s about extending reach on the social media platform,” explains Mani.

He sees Rocketman's service sitting in the editorial space rather than the advertising space, making their content "more digestible and relevant."

Branching out

Rocketman have recently added a new product, Rocketfuel, to their portfolio. While Rocketman worked vertically with a number of key bloggers, Rocketfuel takes a horizontal approach with a larger number of bloggers. Anywhere up to 50 bloggers may be approached with a piece of content, for example a video, which a brand is aiming to amplify through social networks. Rather than traditional banner advertising, content is pushed out via the blogger’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Bloggers then conduct a brief online discussion about the product, similar to a mini-sponsored post, which the agency can monitor. Mani sees this as a win-win situation as bloggers get re-numerated and brand content is shared.

Recognising the value of bloggers

Giving agencies a value on the influence of bloggers is becoming easier for Rocketman, as appreciation for their voice and audience matures. “Bloggers are micro-influencers, influencing micro-communities. These communities talk and that’s how things get started. We’re trying to get to the root of where discussions are happening” say Mani.

Key bloggers like Not Quite Nigella, a Sydney based food blogger, has an audience of over 150,000. “When you put that into perspective, it’s larger than some magazines that sit in the ACP publications, or even Fairfax. It’s huge. Agencies are now seeing this.”

Balance and branding

Ultimately, Mani believes that respecting bloggers and brands are the keys to Rocketman's success. He says bloggers as “competing for time and eyeballs. So the better the blog and the quality of content, the more followers they attract and more influential they become.”

For brands, he sees facilitating online discussions about their products in targeted social media circles as offering better value than traditional digital advertising.

By collaborating with bloggers and coming up with solutions for brands, Rocketman is establishing a strong model for future online promotion.