Tag: social media

How To Start Producing Beats

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Beat making is a popular hobby – and for some people a rewarding career. But just how do you get started? This post explains everything you need to know as a budding beatmaker – whether you’re looking to produce hip hop beats, dance beats or something experimental. 

Select the right software

There are many different types of music production software on the market. Some are specifically built for certain genres of music, however most programs are suitable for a range of styles.

Some of the most popular programs used by some of the top producers include Ableton, Fl Studio, Apple Logic Pro and Cubase. There are also a number of programs aimed at beginners like Magix Music Maker.

You’ll have to pay a subscription fee to use all of these programs, however most of them offer free trials that can allow you to test out features first. Online reviews and video walkthroughs can similarly give you an idea of what each program is like to use. Bear in mind that some programs may be better suited for using on certain devices (for example, Apple Logic Pro may be easier to use for Mac users, while FL Studio is better for Microsoft users). 

Consider buying some hardware

Nowadays, it’s possible to craft solely digital beats. However, most producers find it beneficial to have some hardware at their disposal. 

Just what are some of the best types of hardware to consider? A few examples could include:

  • A drum machine: The likes of this easy to use drum machine could help you to produce digital drum beats the old-fashioned way.
  • A soundboard: Soundboards can be used for producing beats and for bringing some improvisation to live performances. 
  • Mixing decks: Want to mix hip hop samples the traditional way? Some mixing decks could be a worthy purchase.
  • A digital piano: Coming up with melodies could be much easier on a physical keyboard than a digital keyboard. Almost all producers have some piano playing knowledge and find a piano to be a useful composing tool.
  • Other instruments and microphones: You can incorporate all kinds of instrumentation into beats from live drums to guitars. You may even decide that you want to add some of your own vocals. Having other instruments and microphones at your disposal will help you to experiment (although you can always work with other musicians instead).

Choose your samples wisely

Sampling is a big part of beat making – especially in hip hop – however you need to be careful of which samples you use if you’re planning on making money from your beats. Royalty free samples are your best choice if you haven’t got the money to pay for sample clearance. You can also buy sample packs.

Watch YouTube tutorials

There is a lot of technical stuff to learn when producing. This includes how to use effects like compression and reverb, how to change the pitch/temp of samples and how to mix and master to give each sound the right level of clarity. YouTube tutorials are an invaluable tool for learning all of this – there are videos out there for learning everything from how to mix bass to how to replicate certain sounds styles. You can also find tutorials catered to specific production programs and hardware. 

Listen closely to your favourite recordings

The best way to learn how to produce is to closely listen to your favourite recordings. Start by learning to pick out all the individual sounds and then try to work out what effects have been added and how they’ve been mixed. You’ll learn all kinds of production tricks from trying to mimic these producers – even if it means playing around with volume dials and compressors until you get the right sound. 

Take time to experiment

The best producers aren’t just imitators. They actively experiment with samples and instruments and effects to see what they can conjure up. While some of us prefer to compose beats in our head, it can be worth occasionally playing around and seeing what comes out. This is how new sounds and styles are born.

Share your beats online

While some people may be happy enough producing beats for their own enjoyment, most of us eventually want to share our beats with the world. Once you’re happy with the quality of a mix, consider finding a streaming platform to share it on. SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Spotify and YouTube are some of the most popular platforms for sharing music. It’s worth also taking the time to promote your music through social media and possibly through some paid advertising. You could also try submitting your music to publications and podcasts that specialise in sharing new music. Working with album artwork designers, video producers and PR companies could be necessary if you want to go professional.

Securing That Essential First Impression For Your Brand

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Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

It sounds quite limiting to say, but first impressions matter. Sure, you can always reimpose a new impression after the fact if given a chance, but you’re not always given that chance to do so. While you may not like someone at first, repeated exposure to them may help you realize you judged too hastily.

But it’s true that the first impression a house gives can secure an impression of its overall valuation, a first date will be unlikely to make it to the second if a first impression isn’t secured at least half-positively, and of course, potential customers seeming unimpressed by a brand can totally limit it’s potential moving forward.

As you can see, then, securing that essential first impression is not necessarily just a good marketing move, but an essential business strategy. But how can you achieve this? Well, this process means much more than just being flashy with your marketing material. In this post, we’ll discuss how to substantiate such a need, and how your business can benefit as a result:

Careful Copywriting

Many people think that copywriting is an easy process. After all, you just need to express something with a few positive adjectives and you’re golden, right? Well, not necessarily. Carefully and consistently explaining your product or service with brevity takes skill, and is often best handed by the guided insight of a writing professional. This way, you can explain your service tiers, your unique delivery packaging, or your brand on social media with brevity. This can help people understand what you offer before they form their first impression – immediately allowing them to have all the facts before that natural judgment comes into play.

Marketing Delivery

The format by which you deliver your marketing also makes a massive difference regarding its overall success. For instance, using the best shopper marketing agency can help you more accurately understand and deliver immediate marketing to those who may be ready to make that immediate purchase, increasing the worthwhile sense of demand, FOMO, and natural interest to cultivate awareness and immediate interest in what you have to offer. Depending on the product, marketing form can differ also. For instance, there’s a reason why fragrance and designer sunglasses ads litter the pages of magazines like GQ – it’s all about correct placement, and the theme you nest in.

Convenience & Clarity

The easier you make your presentation to potential clients or customers, the more likely they’ll look at you with hidden gratitude, because not only did you not waste their time, but you attempted to help them become familiar almost instantly. For instance, instead of listing all of your services on the front page of your website, what are your most popular options? How does your booking form work, or could it be that your landing page shows a tier list of how to book projects with your brand there and then? Convenience is king, especially online.

With this advice, you’ll be sure to secure that essential first impression for your brand going forward.

Building A Career in Social Media

Scott Asai1 Comment

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One of the most underrated yet accessible careers today is that of a social media brand ambassador. It seems like a daunting endeavor, but becoming an ambassador is easier than it looks and it’s the perfect career for generations such as Millennials and members of Generation Z. These two generations are incredible tech-savvy and make great social media representatives.

What is a Brand Ambassador?

A brand ambassador’s main responsibility is to raise awareness of a company and their available products. By utilizing social media, they function as spokespeople and attempt to sell a company’s product’s to their fanbase. Anyone can become a brand ambassador with the right direction and strategic social media campaigning.

How To Get Started

The hardest part about becoming an online brand ambassador is getting started, so here’s the best place for you to begin.

Step 1: Find a brand you connect with.

When choosing what brand you’d like to represent, you should choose to apply for brands that fit your own personal style. In order to really encourage audience engagement, your looks and lifestyle should enhance the products you’re trying to sell. If you’re sporty and want to produce more athletic content, then a sportswear company like Fabletics will be more enjoyable for both you and your following. However, if you’re more of a cocktail and wine night host, a store like Oh Polly is a better fit for your personal brand.

Step 2: Building Your Audience

A major part of your success is going to come from your audience’s engagement with your social media pages. Start with people you know. The best networks start with those you’re familiar with. Reach out to friends and family members, and get the word out that you’ve taken on a brand ambassador position. This way you’ll be able to reach new people through sources who can advocate for not only the company you’re representing but for you as the ambassador. You should also make sure to tag the social media pages of the company you’re representing. Their company is likely to repost pictures from  your page and that allows more people to discover your accounts.

Step 3: Get Your Audience To Engage With Your Page

Now that you’ve built an audience, keep them on the book by encouraging them to engage with your social media platforms. Try different trends like making ”A Week In My Life” videos or doing a Q&A session about yourself and the company you;re representing. This way, your audience can get to know both you and the company better and on more personal terms. Be sure to make sure these videos and streams are of a high quality. Content is more engaging if you have the right kit. If you’re showing off your kitchen, something as silly as a misplaced water stop can make your video seem less entertaining or can draw focus away from the main focus of your video.

In a digital age, there has been a rise of everyday people becoming successful social media influencers and brand ambassadors. For members of the Millenial and Generation Z crowds, their natural knack for social media campaigning and networking makes them strong candidates for this career path. Although a lot of this position involves being at the right place at the right time, the beauty is you can reach out to as many brands as you wish in a short amount of time and continue to work in this field for as long as you desire.

These Things Could Jeopardize Your Career

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Collaborative post – may contain affiliate links

Cultivating your career is one of the things you can spend a huge part of your adult life doing. Not everyone is super career-focused, but you might still want to try and increase your earnings or just make sure you don’t get bored at work. If you want to climb the career ladder, or simply ensure you can keep your job, it’s important to know what could affect you negatively. Some things could put your career in danger if you’re not careful. If you want to protect your career and ensure you can go after your goals, be aware of the following things.

Bad Behavior on Social Media

As social media has rapidly grown, not everyone has kept up with the importance it can play in your career. While you might see your social media as part of your personal life, employers are often concerned with how you’re using it. They care about how you present yourself publicly, especially if you make it clear who your employer is. It’s important to be careful with what you do and say on social media. Try to keep your activity as private as possible and keep in mind that you could make yourself look bad if you’re not careful.

Criminal Record

Getting in trouble with the law can be an issue for your career. Being convicted of some crimes can prevent you from doing some jobs altogether. Others could make employers wary of hiring you. So it’s best to stay on your best behavior if you want to protect your career. However, no one should have their past crimes follow them forever. If mistakes from the past are still following you, reputation management experts could change things for you. They can make positive material online more visible and help to make any less desirable records less visible. You might want to be honest about your past, but it’s not always relevant when you want to grow your career.

Getting a Bad Reputation at Work

Being well-liked at work is something most people want, although the reality is that it’s unlikely that everyone will like you. However, even if you’re not friends with everyone, you don’t want to end up with a bad reputation. If you don’t make an effort to do your job well, you could gain a poor reputation that can even follow you from one job to the next. There’s a lot you have to be careful about at work, from how you associate with colleagues to how hard you work.

Not Having Ambition

Not everyone is extremely ambitious in their career. You might be very happy doing your current job, with no wish to pursue any promotions or move through the ranks. But showing a lack of ambition at work could be damaging for some people’s careers. You don’t necessarily have to want a promotion to show drive. You could demonstrate enthusiasm by getting involved in new projects or learning something new.

Protect your career by avoiding any behavior that could get you into trouble. It’s important to be aware of your image.

Improving Client Communication

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Communication with your clients is essential. Effective communication can help you to build trusting and lasting relationships. It can increase word of mouth marketing and help you to get noticed, and it can be what keeps your customers coming back. But, in a world where there are so many varied ways to communicate, we seem to be getting worse at it. 

The world of social media, and other forms of communication, such as WhatsApp messaging, move quickly. Things pass us by, or we’re overwhelmed by all of the messages that we can see. It can be too much, and businesses can get lost. You might think that as a business owner, you’ve got more important things to do than communicate with clients, but improved communication can actually make other things easier. Here are some tips to help you. 

Hire a Translator

If you do business with overseas clients, hiring a professional service translator can be a big help. You might think that it’s unnecessary with online translations so readily available. But, so many misunderstandings are born out of poor or incorrect translation. Hiring a translator can be a big help when it comes to improving communication with clients in other countries. 

Offer More Communication Options

There are so many ways to communicate nowadays, but you shouldn’t assume that all of your customers like to do it in the same way. Younger customers might prefer to communicate via messages or social media, but if your business has an older clientele, they may prefer phone calls, and even face to face contact. Give your customers a variety of ways to get in touch with you, and ask how they’d prefer you to reach out to them. Try to make things as comfortable as possible. 

Schedule Routine Communication

Routines make things easier to remember. Don’t just assume that your staff, or even you, will follow up with clients at some point. Have a routine that you stick to. A time frame for follow up communications or routine future communication. Make this part of the job, and train your team members to do the same, making sure they understand how important this communication is. 

Establish Real Connections

You are more likely to communicate openly and honestly with your clients if you’ve got a real connection with them. They are more likely to contact you with problems and concerns if they think that you care. Taking the time to get two know your clients, and to learn more about them with friendly conversations is one of the best ways to maintain open channels of communication in the future. 

Follow Up

You might think that your clients will get in touch if they need you, but most of them won’t. That’s why following up after a meeting or sale is so important. A quick phone call or message can help you to highlight problems quickly; increasing loyalty and boosting relationships. 

Add a Personal Touch

Personal touches, like a handwritten card or a personal message on an invoice, can make a world of difference, and help your business to stand out from the rest.

Branding For Beginners

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When it comes to owning a business, and ensuring that enough people know about your Business, plus its service and products, then you will need to think about Branding. Not necessarily the logo, which is required, of course. Branding has many aspects to it that you may not even think about. But also how your Business looks to people from the outside. First impressions count.

What is Branding

What is Branding? Basically, it’s what your Business is known for, the recognizable features and themes surrounding the Business showing the quality. You can simply hugely improve your Branding by making sure your Business is delivering its promises. Making sure that your customers are happy with the service is the best thing you can do for your brand. If you’re not able to keep up with demand, then it’s best to gather a support network of people and outsource some services such as vinylcuttingmachineguide best vinyl cutting machine

Social Media 

Social media can play a big part in your branding efforts, the attitude and friendliness that you want to portray are easy to do with some short messages and stories. All you need to do is be authentic, stick to your plan, and make sure everybody is close to the Business by sharing so much, they will feel right at home when they walk in. You can also use social media to create some noise surrounding the Business, by way of sharing events, and creating competitions.

Graphic design

This may be something that you would want to outsource, especially if you don’t have any experience of designing previously. But after all it is incredibly essential so worth mentioning, you need to think about your color palette, what you’re trying to portray, how you want to go about that and then action it ready for potential clients. Find all the inspiration you can for this one, set the mood board, get magazines and cut out pictures because once you’ve changed the script, it’s not entirely easy to set it back

Survey

Check with friends and family, and even possibly a control group of people, to find out if your new graphic design is working. Print a couple of sample leaflets and send them around to you about this and also just go over and above with the recycling and growing new plants. 

Personal

If your Business is based around you or something that you do personally, then ensuring that the Business you’re running shows precisely what the Business is all about is an important task! Creating a personal brand can be as straightforward or as difficult as you make it, you can just allow your own personality shine by setting up some small videos on Facebook, maybe even launching Facebook live Videos and Instagram stories. This is one of the best ways to build your Branding because people always trust a person above a faceless business.

So, in a nutshell, Branding is just the first look of your Business, it’s the thing that will help people settle on whether to become customers of yours or not, and it is compelling so expect to spend time on this aspect of your new Business.

Social Media: All About Generational Preference

Scott Asai2 Comments

science-and-social-media-platforms

Today technology represents communication. Simply put, social media platforms come down to style and preference. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but to quote George Clooney in the movie Up In The Air, for brevity purposes we’ll stereotype here, it’s faster.

Facebook: All (news source), Baby Boomers are fastest growing population

Pinterest: Moms (who are into fashion/crafts)

LinkedIn/Twitter/YouTube/Yelp: Millennials/Gen X

Instagram/Snapchat/Periscope/Vine: Millennials/Gen Z (all about selfies)

Google+/Tumblr: N/A

For marketing purposes, it doesn’t matter which platform you like best, it’s choosing the one(s) your customers use most frequently.

For example, I use Twitter the most because it’s “real time” breaking news. As a die-hard Lakers fan, I communicate with my peers daily on rumors, discussions and recent stories. I use it as a conversational piece and it’s done well to spread my sports blog posts to a larger audience of people I would have never of met otherwise. On the other hand, I enjoy looking at Instagram, Snapchat and Periscope because they are visual and engaging. I don’t post as much as the people I follow, but it keeps me up to date on what’s current. Professionally LinkedIn is my favorite. It’s one of the most focused social networks where there’s a reason to connect with people while acting as a “live resume” especially to recruiters.

What’s cool and popular isn’t as important as which one(s) you need to spend time on. I’ve cut down my Facebook visits because I found myself wasting a lot of time on there looking at useless updates. So even though Facebook continues to dominate the social media space, I’ve decreased my participation based on needs. Most of my customers find me on LinkedIn and Yelp, so I make sure to stay active on those. And since I engage with Millennials more than any other generation Instagram, Snapchat and Periscope reveal what’s trendy.

The best advice I’ve heard is stop trying to be active on all platforms. There’s no crime having an account on each stage, but focus on one at a time and learn how to master it. Social media is about communicating. The question is: who are you talking to and why?  

Scott Asai is a speaker/coach that has been developing leaders for 20+ years – athletes, companies and individuals. His focus is helping people develop leadership skills to advance in their careers. Scott tends to attract a large audience of Millennials and Introverts to his programs/events. His professional background consists of: B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Organizational Leadership, Certified Professional Coach and Certified Strengths Coach.