Over the last year, or even longer (though less consistently) there have three or so major themes here:

1. Music/Sound
2. Electronic communications (social media, Web 2.0, new media, etc…)
3. Our human potential (self-motivation, self-help, goals, etc…)

These themes have taken many forms, including anecdotes, videos, and posts I’ve found online to quotes, book references, poetry, sound samples and musical references. That’s not going to change, but time has given me the benefit of being able to see what this blog is about; what scales, and what’s sustainable as a writer and leader of this endeavor.

If you imagine this blog as an impressionist painting, say a darker Monet (above) or Renoire, and you blur the specific content items into a single whole, the focus of the writing and the message start to get more narrow. You start to see that really this blog is about me and what I’ve tried to do since I came online with my music in 1999, I write a bit about that at the bottom this post here. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s funny because as I write this I remember what it was that attracted me to the Web. I was a musician/composer, and I was working on a recording. After having played guitar for years, being in bands, playing shows, and trying to sell music at venues, I saw that the Web had the power to change everything for me as a working artist — the playing field had been leveled. On the Web, in 1999, Mp3.com had just launched, and it was skies the limit for artists to get out their, hang a virtual shingle, and let the world know about their work. However, it wasn’t about huckstering your product and bombarding folks with spam to inform them about your work (though there was some of that); rather there was an openness that permeated throughout this new platform. There were new channels for sharing what you were doing, as well as for folks, from all the over the world, to share with you.

The Web was, is, the great liberator. It leveled the playing field for artists of all kinds, but for me as a composer, the benefits have been huge. Here are a few reasons why:

• Getting the message out is cheap (often free)
• Exposure is as great as the work you put into it (and free, not historically the case)
• Everyone in the world (with an internet connection) can access your work.
• You are your own limitation because the world is at your finger tips (or to use bad 90’s copy – just a mouse click away)

These items are unprecedented, and while they have, and will continue to, come with their own struggles, it’s has the potential to be a boon for the working artist, writer, and creative. Therefore, the moral of the, blog/story that I’ve been weaving for the past year  starts to look like this:

If you’re a composer, artist, creative, whatever then there’s no excuse to not get your work out there, do the most and be the most you can be; the Web and the many electronic communications tools available to you (including email, social media and even old school listservs and newsgroups) can help you get the message out there about your work.

That’s it.

That’s the fork in the message for creatives out there.

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Reading about Gutenberg, movable type, and printing in general always makes me think about just how far we’ve come in the realm of communications and the ability to disseminate information. As many of you know, I’m a letterpress printer, using machines that aren’t much different from the ones Gutenberg himself worked with five hundred, yep, that’s 500! years ago!!!

On the other end of spectrum, though, is the work that I’m lucky enough to do every day in the realm of electronic communications. Read the Wired, This Day In Tech, article, and allow your mind to wander, thinking about, imagining, the world of lead type, and heavy cast iron that was needed to get a message out there. Then think back a bit further to a time of hand scribes, and no dissemination at all except what could be passed word-of-mouth.

It’s kind of hard to imagine especially in a world rapid-fire tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, and blog posts just like this one, that not too long ago there was no Web, or iPhone, or Blackberry or anything else that permitted such awesome real-time, in the moment, communication. Just sayin’… pretty awesome.

Our struggle now isn’t the media, but finding the attention to dedicate to it all… Exciting stuff.

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That’s the question I was asking myself last night as I sat doing more recording. It could be. I mean, in many ways it’s not a stretch from ambient, in fact to some it’s semantics, but for me they’re fairly different. Could it be remnants of my old band The Elevator Conspiracy creeping into my solo work? Could be? Speaking of which two Elevator Conspiracy videos, from a show we did in March 09, have just surfaced; two tunes that I wrote so it gives some indication of where things could go. More to come.

Come Closer – The Elevator Conspiracy

Rewrite the Book – The Elevator Conspiracy

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Found an interesting article here, called The 11 Rules of Social Media Etiquette at the Digital Labz Web site, and thought that I really should share it.

With social media, or any platform, it’s super important to know the etiquette. Kind of like the saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do…” same thing applies with social media. You learn about culture and etiquette from participating, but this site is a good primer.

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Truly, no man is an island, but some times the best thing that you can do is as much as you can by yourself. Of course, the sacrifice is that you’re not going to grow as much as you’d like as quickly as you’d like, and you’re doing it alone. However, I would say that sometimes that’s a fair trade off because growth comes with its own sacrifice.

As you grow you’re forced to add more people, more productive ways of doing things, and managing all the perspectives that those new additions bring. Of course, thinking about doing something small-scale only is contrary to the American way, but often times, bigger isn’t better, it’s just more complex and cumbersome.

What’s the happy medium? I would say that the happy medium is doing as much as you can by yourself, and then bringing people in on an as-needed basis, preferably short-term if that can be arranged. This is something that I’ve had to learn the hard way, through experience, both in my corporate work and my creative work.

A quick example: Let’s say you’re the leader of a band, and the group gigs very actively with most of the group making their living from music. One day you have to take a leave for some kind of surgery, that’s going to leave you recovering for awhile unable to go on stage or do lengthy van rides in the back of a Ford Econoline. Your band will feel that it’s your responsibility to get them paying work or to pay them something to maintain their open schedule while you’re out of commission. Sadly, you have to make a choice, cut them loose and try to regroup once you come back to things or pay them something to keep their schedules open, or even try to use your connections to find them work. I’ve done both, but fortunately, I’ve always had small groups.

And I’ve always had a small groups precisely because of this conundrum. You want to have loyal players, and employees, but loyalty is a two-way street.

So again, no man is an island, but the more you can do by yourself the more successful you’ll be simply because you’ll be able to focus more on the work and less on the management of the thing that started with your idea.

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As an entrepreneur, small business person, or artist/musician looking to get themselves or their business more exposure, there’s no single tool greater than YouTube. I’m sure that you’re already familiar with YouTube for funny and silly videos, as well as other things, you’ve seen here or there, but the hidden benefit to YouTube is making your own video, and using it to bring a greater awareness to your work or business.

For instance, let’s say you own a dry cleaners. You might think that nobody could have any possible interest in the business of a dry cleaners on YouTube; you’d be wrong. The Web is filled with just this kind of stuff, these minor curiosities that folks would love to spend a few minutes watching while they’re eating their lunch.

Take this video, for example, with almost 76,000 views… what if you made this video, and promoted your company simply by including a small logo in the bottom corner, or having the people in the video wear shirts with your logo, boo-yaa! I guarantee business would increase:

Then there’s this one, which, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines talked about at the Digital PR Next Summit I recently attended, and it made me laugh out loud. This is a video of a jet engine being washed, basically, three minutes of water being blown through a jet engine, almost 97,000 views:

Anyway, I think you get the point. YouTube can bring great awareness to your work whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, artist or musician. Surf around YouTube, and look at folks in your business are using it. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll find.

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For entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters of any kind I would say that you should get started using social media. In fact, this should have been the first post in the Social Media Take Away series, but hey I’m improvising and making things up as I go here…

What is social media?

Social media is any web tools that allows groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…)

Social media is particularly valuable for entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters in-general, I’m thinking artists – painters, musicians and the like, because it gives them low cost, high value, far reaching exposure for whatever they’re doing. As I write more about the social media value, I’ll cover some of these. For starters, I would say see this post on Twitter or items tagged with social media on this blog. Though, I’ll be covering stuff more in-depth, and high level, alike as I develop this feature of the blog.

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I found the PR News Digital PR Next Practices Summit to be highly informative. It was a good chance to brush up on theories of social media in application, but it was also good to see some different things that people were doing. For me, though, there were a couple really great stand out presentations. The first one that really stuck out for me was:

Social Media Relations: Getting Positive Coverage in the Conversational Age, which featured the folks below, with their names being links to their respective presentations. This one was great:

Johna Burke (@gojohnab)
Vice President
BurrellesLuce

Julie Crabill (@julzie)
VP, Consumer Lifestyle Practices
Shift Communications

Monte Lutz (montelutz)
SVP of Digital Public Affiars
Edelman

The next one that I thought was really great, and I would say, possibly the best one, because the presenter, Paula Berg, was a great presenter, with a lot of enthusiasm and a real sense of humor about what she’s doing, was YouTube and Other Video Tactics to Advance Your PR:

Paula Berg (@PaulaBerg)
Manager of Emerging Media
Southwest Airlines

Here are some highlights from PR News Digital PR Next Practices Summit as posted on Twitter by attendees:

@montelutz #prnsummit – reporters are setting up spam filters for phrases like “great story idea” to weed out bad pitches –> @gojohnab

@gojohnab #prnsummit @julzie SM release preso old releases no longer applicable too much marketing speak not enough community and conversation

@cericwright @julzie says your brand belongs to the community at large #prnsummit

@montelutz “your brand’s already been hijacked. it doesn’t belong to you. it belongs to the community” #prnsummit ht @julzie

@nduhoski Check out Microsoft, Cisco, Ford for good social media newsroom site examples. #prnsummit

@nduhoski Google is as much a reputation engine as it is a search engine. #prnsummit

@nduhoski RT @DenverPRguy Your brand has been hijacked already. Its not owned by you but by the community. Be part of the community’s convo #prnsummit

@nduhoski When it comes to SM Best Practices: Beg, Borrow & Steal, then give back, credit. #prnsummit

@FlightpathNY Coke did not start their facebook page, even now they co-manage it with fans of the brand #prnsummit

@Rat_Race Lots of talk about engaging employees as brand advocates. Wonder how a work life balance fits in… Is there a balance? #prnsummit

@julzie @paullyoung “hits: how idiots track success” #prnsummit

@DenverPRguy Social Media users are 83% more likely to be brand loyal than non-users (from Paull Young, Converseon at #prnsummit)

@FlightpathNY Relationships with community members is the most critcal element & the most difficult to measure. Transparency remains paramount #prnsummit

@kdpaine RT @DenverPRguy: Relationships are what makes SM successful. UR measurement plan should track what those relationships look like. #prnsummit

@paullyoung says that the most powerful analytics tool is the human brain, use common sense #prnsummit

@mtkiefer @leeodden “if content can be searched on, it can be optimized” #prnsummit

@MerrittPR Incorperate links within online content and don’t have link read: click here but rather imbed within content of release or copy #prnsummit

@DenverPRguy Amen. “One of the biggest dangers of social media is not getting involved.” #prnsummit

@gojohnab Good #CEO ’s recognize smart people no matter what level in the organization and will engage when appropriate #prnsummit

@gojohnab: #prnsummit Matthias Preschern: Content is king. Participate by linking in vs. Trying to build communities on your own

@MerrittPR Why does the blogosphere matter? B/c 71% of all journos read blogs for content #prnsummit

@MerrittPR Engage the blogosphere BEFORE, during and after a crisis! #prnsummit

@DallasLawrence Great comment by Southwest at #prnsummit – no link between quality of video and views. In other words, content and authenticity rules

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So what’s gone well today?
Pretty much everything.

• I had a great car ride to Detroit Metro airport, traversing Michigan in the fall with the colors at full brilliance… awesome!
• There were no waits at the airport
• Security was smooth
• I had a great and smooth flight into LaGuardia
• I had an awesome cab ride that had me singing Bobby Humphrey’s Harlem River Drive, as I sat in the cab driving on Harlem River Drive – Nice!
• Filled my belly with some authentic New York style pizza, a first, and I’m still not convinced that’s it’s better that Chicago style, or more specifically, DeLuca’s the Lansing original, though that’s sure to draw up on some controversy.

But all this is an aside, because I’ve come to New York City to attend the PR News Digital PR Next Practices Summit. Basically, this is a chance to get informed, and fill in some knowledge gaps on a variety of digital PR, electronic communications, and SEO/SEM stuff that I think will be of value to my employer, me, and my readers.

If you read this, and you’re attending, say, “hey,” if you see me….

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I talk to a lot of people about Twitter. I was a serious non-believer in Twitter, for a long time. I registered an account not long after they opened up shop, and I just didn’t get it. I mean, I got it, but the idea of micro-blogging, and “What are you doing now?” seemed to be creepy and narcissistic, actually I still feel that way, but I have found value in it.

It’s not that I care so much about what somebody just ate for breakfast, or that they’re stuck in traffic, or “so excited for the weekend!” which may have some value among groups of Twitter users, but next to none for the general Twitter pool. However, it’s the quick blurbs of information with links to articles I’m interested in, interviews, and other information that has really pulled me into being a user.

The take away: If you’re looking for articles, information, breaking news and the like, I would say that Twitter has a lot of value. I would also say that if you tweet about your work, your interests, etc… and it caters to the sort of PR and tech folks that are on Twitter then they might get the message, and you might be able to build interest in what you’re doing locally; eventually making real-world, physical contacts.

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