Epic Publicity #WIN!

I've always been a fan of music artists doing cool new things. One of my favorites is DJ's who find new cool ways to mix, sample or change other artists music. That's why I was excited about a year and a bit ago when I heard that DJ AM was teaming up with Travis Barker (of Blink-182), whom I think is one of the best drummers around right now, to do an album.

The result was a great mix tape called "Fix Your Face" where DJ AM did the mixing and scratching and Travis played his awesome style of what I refer to as "ninja drumming" over the whole thing.

I got really excited the other day when I saw that the duo had released their set from Cochella 2009 as an album "Fix Your Face 2".

My friend gave me a link for the free download, which I'll give to you all shortly. The thing about this download was it was done in a manner I've never seen before, but I think was a genius idea for publicity on their part.

When you click on the link it will take to you to a website that says you can get a free download of this new album in exchange for one tweet (that's a twitter message for all of you not on the bandwagon yet). If you continue to click through, the site logs you onto twitter and then asks if you will allow it to tweet a message that says:

"Download the new #trvsdjam mixtape "Fix Your Face Vol. 2 - Coachella 09" in exchange for one tweet!"

GENIUS!!!

This message spread over a persons Twitter network allows everyone to see the name "TRVSDJAM", let's them know they have a new album and even makes a hashtag for the guys so that if enough people get the album through this method #trvsdjam will become a hot trending twitter topic.

I don't know about you, but I think this a great way for some free and great publicity. I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see other artists or even companies all trying things like this in the near future.

Now for those of you dying for the link to get the album in exchange for a tweet, here it is: http://twitter.trvsdjam.com

Now here's a track from their first album:

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Random Thoughts on Twitter

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about how it's hard at times to get involved in social media when none of your "real life" friends are into it. Aside from facebook, most of my friends don't belong to other social mediums. I'm pretty sure, out of all the people I follow and who follow me on Twitter, only three of them are friends in real life. And one of them never uses Twitter, she just has an account.

I just wanted to say that not all of my experiences in discovering and learning and interacting in social mediums have been hard efforts. Specifically, Twitter.

When I first joined Twitter, which was late in the game already, I did an email search for my friends and only came up with two people. So what was I going to do?

I started using Twitter's search section and looking for people in Toronto and things I'm interested in, like; PR, marketing, social media, etc. I quickly built up a list of just under 100 people The problem was..., they were complete strangers. I didn't know where to start either, so I just started posting stupid shit that popped into my head. A few people would write the random comment back @ me, but mostly I would just read what other people were talking about. 

After a little while I started to get a feel for some of the people I was following, and would write something to them if I felt strongly about something they had said. The more comfortable I was becoming with this new online world, the easier it became for me to be myself and not just be some online guy. I was me, just online.

I was thinking about that the other day, and it reminded me of something I get told a lot in my PR classes: allow yourself to be fully visible and people will appreciate it. Sure, when my teachers say it they're mainly talking about companies and organizations, but it seems to work everywhere. People always tell you when you're going to meet new people "just be yourself." Apparently it also works online.

Once I started just being myself I've made a lot of friends via Twitter. I'm not just talking about how I've picked up more followers, but more that they're actual friend-type characters. People who know about things going on in my life. People whose lives I know about. People who just say "what up". But I consider them friends. I've learned about all sorts of new things from people on Twitter, and I'm also not afraid to ask people questions about anything. In fact, I've even been looking to get some experience in the PR and social media field and advertising it on Twitter. Some people who could, have been very helpful, and I've even had people who weren't on my list contact me about it.

So now I've totally lost where I was completely going with this post, but I feel better about saying what I did. So if anyone is reading this, I guess my message is if you can be a real person on social mediums people will see the genuineness (I'm pretty sure that's a real word) and you can make some real friends. Some of them may even come in handy to know one day.

Also, since Twitter's search has been down forever now, here's a good site for finding some people on Twitter with similar interests. Just Tweet It allows you to search for tweeters with similar interests, as well as post your Twitter profile under your interests for other people to find you. Check out Just Tweet It here.

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There's just no good way to do it

Last night I went to a networking event put on by the CPRS (Canadian Public Relations Society), of which I am a recent member of. There was a few people from my class there, a few other's I recognized from my school and a bunch of people I'd never seen before in my life. All and all, it was a nice little event for people to get to know the board of the CPRS.

Here's the problem I had however:

We were supposed to be going around and meeting all the board members, but it was in a very informal setting. Everyone was just kind of standing around with a drink in hand. The board members were primarily talking amongst themselves, and we the students had to kindly interup all of their conversations just to say hello and introduce ourselves.

Now, I'm usually pretty good about budding into other people's conversations. I usually don't care if I interrupt people in the middle of their thoughts or sentences, but it seems like a whole different ball game at an event like this. These aren't my friends talking about last night's hockey game and I can just jump in. This is the President of the society looking like he's having an intense conversation with the chairman in charge of sponsorships, and I'm just this lowly student who wants to say hello for the one in a million chance that they'd even remember me in the future. I don't usually intimidate very easily, but there's something weird when you're put in a situation like that. 

All and all, I wound up interrupting a lot of conversations last night, and although it felt awkward at times, I think it was worth it in the long run, and hopefully I stood out in a crowd of my peers.

FIRST BLOG EVER! (sounds cool if you say it like comic book guy)

So, it's been a long time coming, but I finally decided to start my own blog. 

We'll just call this my starter blog, or blog with training wheels, to get me going in the blogging game. Also, if you're wondering what this blog will be about, well you're looking at it (if you're looking at the title). I don't have a specific topic, so I figure I'm just gonna blog about anything I find interesting, or stuff thats on my mind, completely random shit. 

For this first post, I figured I should tell you all (if anyone's reading this) a bit about myself so you can have some idea of what to expect.

I'm a 26 year old student (sad, i know) in Toronto. I recently went back to school to do a post-grad in Corporate Communication and Public Relations at Seneca College. That's one of the main reasons I decided to start this blog, I figure it will be good writing practice for myself. The excuse of good writing practice is also a good excuse to not have an overall theme for my blog.

I'm a bit of a recent tech-geek. I've always been into computers and tech gadgets, but a few months ago I bought my first mac, and that was the end of everything. I've joined the cult of mac. I'm in love with my mac and love reading blogs and all things apple related. I of course had to get an iPhone 3g to go with that, so that upped my game a bit. ALL HAIL JOBS

I've also recently started to get into learning as much as I can about social media and web 2.0. I figure that's going to be the future of both PR and marketing, so I might as well try to get in on the 2nd floor (I figured I missed the ground floor). Hopefully by next week sometime I'll figure out how to put one of those boxes on the side of this blog that links to my twitter, digg, and other such accounts so you can follow my A.D.D. there as well.

I'm a huge music person. I don't play any instruments, although I did buy an acoustic guitar a little while ago and am teaching myself to play (I can play four whole chords now!). I love listening to music, and I've held many jobs related to music from working in a record store to DJing to working for a small concert promotions company. Music has been, and most likely always will be, my first love. I love finding new music and sharing it with other people. I'll listen to anything as long as it makes my ear drums dance, so please feel free to send me anything cool. Hopefully one day I will find a way to marry my PR/marketing and music loves together.

I'm a pop-culture whore. When I started university I was actually in a program called Popular Culture Studies. I love movies, TV, books, comics, everything pop culture, but I can't stand celebrity gossip.  I'm a crazy LOST fan. If I could only watch one show ever it would be LOST, so don't be surprised in the new year when the premire gets closer if I have a lot of LOST related blog posts. I've also gotten back into reading graphic novels lately. I just finished reading Marvel Zombies, which was a cool idea, but not the best thing I've ever read.

I think that's a good start for now. It gives you (and me) a fairly rough idea of what you'll find in this blog in the near future. If you're still reading, thanks, and I'll quit boring you for now, but come back and check me out every now and again, and I'll try my best to at least make one post every couple days.

Also, feel free to leave me a comment and make me feel loved.

ONE LAST THING!!! Since I love music so much I'm gonna try to put a song or a video at the end of every post, just for fun. I was going to put up something significant here for this first post, since it should be a big deal, but I just had way too many songs pop into my head, so instead I decided to put up this video I saw earlier today, cause it just rocked and it's stuck in my head.

Watch the whole thing, it's worth it, cause you don't even see Prince for the first 4 mins of the song, but then he comes out and steals the show with an amazing solo. enjoy!

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