Words cannot express how excited I am to be putting pen to virtual paper for this blog post. No really, they can’t… so I’ll save you the endless (and annoying) exclamation marks and instead just point you to the photo over to the right.

That cute little lady over there (h/t to sidkid for the awesome photo!) comes close to describing what I feel about this new role. Related: I may or may not have done the same thing when I found out I got the job.

As the title says, I’ve recently accepted a role at Billboard (yes, THAT Billboard) to be their Social Marketing Manager. This is the opportunity of a lifetime and I’m beyond stoked to see what I can jump in and accomplish.

So – what will I be doing in this beyond amazing job of a job? Here’s the highlights version!

I’ll be…

• One of the voices behind Billboard’s Twitter (@billboarddotcom) and their Facebook page (as well as the other social outposts like Instagram, YouTube, etc.)
• Working with the events marketing team to market Billboard events
• Helping to drive traffic to Billboard.com
• Doing a lot of Community Manager-type stuff, including community development and engagement, as well as outreach
• Working on a lot of the contests/sweepstakes you see on Billboard.com
• Measuring everything I do (would you expect anything else?)

I could wax poetic about how this role is made of sheer awesomeness and unicorns and I could go on practically forever with my ideas for things to do, especially as I’ve got a list already that takes up quite a few pages…

But I won’t, as that would be annoying. Instead I’ll let YOU imagine just how excited I am to be able to join the already beyond awesome team(s) at Billboard and have the unbelievable chance to do what I’m passionate about doing on my nights/weekends for a full-time job.

As far as what this means for this blog? TBD for the nitty-gritty, but I do know that this blog will be sticking around and still be talking about the same topic I currently talk about – digital marketing for musicians. That being said, from time to time I might mention something I’m working on/have worked on at Billboard, so expect some cross-pollination at points.

I’ve been a bit quiet here lately, partially due to time constraints in this thing I like to call “real life”, and partially due to the fact that my RSS feed was giving me major issues.

I’m sure you’re not surprised by either of these admissions!

In good news, the RSS feed has been fixed (thanks @norcross!).

In more good news, a spiffy new look and feel will be coming at some point soon (and if you’re visiting me on the web, welcome to the interim look and feel!).

Through all of this, it has become much easier to move away from using Feedburner for my feed and just stick with the standard feed options. OK – that takes care of the technical talk in today’s post…

What this means for you

You can use the nifty “subscribe” button to the right of this post (from the web) to subscribe to the feed I’ll be using going forward.

OR

You can click “add a subscription” or whatever the similar button is in your feed reader and add this baby: http://candidkatie.com/feed

I’ll be posting on a more regular basis soon, as I have a solid 5-7 draft posts that I’ve been dying to get out (but not wanted to due to said RSS issue).

So stay tuned, and stay subscribed!

I’ll admit it, I like bass. I like crispy, crunchy basslines – full of rhythm and groove.  I dig the sub bass that is so prominently featured in dubstep, and as an overall preference, I like rich music, full of sound, nuances and flavor.

I suppose it’s only natural, seeing as I grew up playing violin first, then percussion – all for a grand total of about 15 years combined.  I tried my hand at DJ’ing briefly in college (and have lately been debating taking that back up, but that’s another matter), but I ultimately decided that I wanted to focus on my career (marketing) and keep music as a hobby to be enjoyed, not worked for.

Nevertheless, I’ve stayed connected to the electronic music scene throughout my years – the list of DJ’s I’ve seen is quite lengthy and I still go to shows on a pretty regular basis – as long as they’re not obnoxiously late on a weeknight (which, regrettably, some are!).

In a bit of a departure for me, I’m sharing a mix with just a teenie marketing lesson… never underestimate the memory of your consumers. I downloaded this mix purely based on my past memories of Aquasky and was blown away – this mix has totally brought Aquasky to the forefront of my mind and you can bet that I’ll be looking to see if there are any upcoming gigs in my area.

There – business over.  Go download this ridiculously rude mix.  Rude being said in the very best of contexts, of course.  I have a feeling that you’ll love it as much as I do if you’re into bass-heavy, upbeat electronic music.  It’s all over the place genre-wise, from drum n bass to dubstep, nuskool and some electroish stuff, to name a few.

*download* Aquasky Nov. 2010 mixtape by Dave Aquasky

Let me break it down to you.  Nobody is perfect.  Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone screws up, and everyone lives to either regret, or improve on their past mistakes.

My professional life focuses a lot on perfection.  Are all of our t’s crossed? Our i’s dotted? Does this design look pixel perfect? What about the spacing – is it consistent across pieces? Which particular grammar rule are we following here and are we doing it consistently? Should we underline this or simply make it bold? Does the left- or right-side placement have more of an effect?

We analyze, we scrutinize and we perfect every little thing we do. It’s necessary but it’s exhausting.

This blog is my place to write something and have it not be perfect.  To think and let my hands do the translation to the written word for me. Do I have old posts saved as drafts because “they just don’t sound right?” – sure do.  Do I make grammatical mistakes? Surely.  Does my Mom kindly email me to point them out? You betcha (no, really – Hi, Mom!).

This blog is a very public declaration of what I feel and what I think about marketing and music as a whole. It’s my public opportunity to NOT be perfect.  It’s scary and yes, I still double-check my work, still hold back some pieces that aren’t “quite there” yet, and still regret posting some things as I know that I’m capable of doing better. But – and here’s the important part – I put the great majority of it out there – my own fears and insecurities be damned.

Looking at this in a larger context than just my little world… we’re all flawed creatures.  The notes we play, the songs we sing, and the music we create – it’s all different each time around. There is no such thing as a perfect performance. Trust me, I know.

What I never figured out, though, was where I learned that the imperfections in each performance were the things that made each one special.  Yes, there are parts where we have to play in unison, and conformity is good. But there are parts to every performance that give you the ability to just be you.  Play on, even if you miss a few notes along the way.  Put your heart and soul into it and see what happens.  Try your hardest to better yourself, but don’t let one mistake derail the rest of the piece.

This reminder is for me just as much as for you.  Put that unfinished piece of music out there and ask for critique.  Go play live in an unfamiliar venue and figure it out as you go along.  Host a jam session with a few new musicians and just have fun.  Whatever it is, just go out and do. Go try new things and worry about being perfect later.

This post was inspired by @Adam Singer’s kind words today. Adam – thank you for the timely reminder.

What does a dream cost?

Some people live their entire lives without truly answering that question. Others? They figure it out and take the steps to start making their dream become reality.

I decided to follow one of my dreams at a time when most people would be preparing for the worst – the day I got laid off.  I’d been thinking about living here for a good six years, and the way I saw it – I finally had the chance to pick up and move without a major disruption. Getting laid off made moving look like a piece of cake!

I never truly considered what this dream would cost before that moment.  I mean, I had… but not as thoroughly as I should have.

Somewhere in between deciding that I wanted to move here and the moment I actually decided to pick it all up and relocate, life got in the way.  I had bills to pay, a degree to finish, and a job to secure.  I had a life to run and that life required money! As a recent college graduate, I didn’t have much to spare at the time.

What’s the point? The only thing stopping me from moving up here was me.

I assumed that rent would be outrageous.

I assumed that I’d need much more disposable income.

I assumed that food was more expensive.

I assumed that drinks were more expensive.

I assumed that my housing-related bills would be more expensive.

I got that far and I stopped. What I failed to take into consideration is that while everything above is true, there are also things I managed to overlook.

I don’t have to own a car, so paying to keep, insure, maintain and gas up a car are expenses I never see.

I can take the subway practically anywhere I want to go for a pretty reasonable monthly fee.

I can buy local food at any number of farmers markets and spend less on food than I did previously.

I can pay a reasonable amount of rent if I want. I just have to choose my neighborhoods wisely.

I can choose to spend my money how I wish, and there are a plethora of options for me to do that – from the free to the super expensive.

I’ve been up here for awhile now and I’ve run the numbers. If I were to pick up and move to the city I came from today, it would cost me more to live there than it does to live here.

That’s right, moving back to the city I moved here from would cost me more than staying put in this “big, expensive city” that I now call home.

In all honesty, it took me getting laid off and laying out the cold hard truth of what it would cost to make this move for me to figure that one out. It sounds silly, I know – but I always assumed that “I needed more money” to be able to make it up here. How ironic!

I know people here that make all sorts of money – from the “lots of ” sort to the “not enough of” sort.  I know teachers, bankers, musicians, marketers, bartenders and sales reps.

Money wasn’t what stopped me from making this move sooner. It was the excuse.

Now it’s your turn.

• What’s your dream?
• What do you need to do to get from here to there?
• Have you sat down and planned it all out, from professional and life changes, to the monetary impact of those steps?
• Have you checked and double-checked your assumptions to make sure they’re accurate?

What’s stopping you from living one of your dreams? How can you overcome those obstacles?

Photo credit: Bob Fornal

I love Twitter. But I didn’t always love it. In fact, for the first few months I was on, I actually thought it was completely pointless.

Story time, kiddos…

I got on Twitter in September of 2008 (late, according to most of my counterparts working in social media). I actually jumped on before a trip to NYC, and my first tweets were full of “I’m at the Guggenheim!” and other such nonsense. I didn’t really “get” it, but I figured that I should at least give it a try. To me, it was a way to shout out to the Internet at large about what I was doing… but that felt kind of pointless – I mean, who really cared??

I was shortly followed by a bunch of people in Charlotte, NC. I didn’t know any of them, but quickly found out that, in addition to being full of snark and sass, they were a really cool bunch of smart people. I happen to like smarts, sass and snark, so I started posting a bit more and responding to their posts.

Truth be told, I still didn’t “get” Twitter. It was all like a big disjointed IM conversation to me, and all of it was pointless.

So I went out to a meetup (tweetup), and actually met these people.  My impressions were correct! The local people were just as cool offline as they were online (if not more so). Now I had faces and personalities to go with internet personas and avatars. Progress!

Then I got laid off.

After calling a co-worker (to declare that we were going for margaritas) and my Mom (to tell her I was laid off), I tweeted about being laid off. I wasn’t home yet, but when I got home to change before heading out for said margaritas, guess what happened? I GOT Twitter. I understood.

In the 10 minutes between Tweeting out that I was laid off and arriving at home I had about 30 replies from people I didn’t know sending their condolences, asking for my resume, or telling me to keep my chin up. A lot of these people I didn’t even follow, but they saw my note because someone I did ReTweeted it, and they offered their help.  Seriously, COMPLETE STRANGERS.

From there, it was a bit of a snowball effect. I kept connecting with more people, shortly moved to NYC, and continued to use Twitter. I started giving back. ReTweeting things that I thought others would find valuable, sharing their stories if they needed help, and connecting with people. Not because it was benefiting me, but because I cared and I wanted to provide the help and support that had once been provided to me.

What’s important here isn’t the fact that I was laid off. The important fact is that I had the opportunity to see first hand what a community, even a loosely-knit one, can do. What sort of personal impact it can have, even for a complete stranger and someone new to the scene.

It’s not about my story. Its about viewing things in a new light, about turning something around and seeing it from all angles, and about having patience. I tweeted for a few months without really “getting it”, and then one day, I did.

You never know what sort of opportunities can lead to learning, and all too often we give up before we really “get it”.

So. What about you? When did you see something in a different light? When did things “click” for you?

I could apologize for not posting in a few weeks. But I won’t.

Instead, i’m going to share some things I’ve learned, some over the last month, and some way before.

When I started this blog I wrote so that I didn’t bother my friends with my ramblings and thoughts about music and marketing. Quite frankly, it had gotten to the point of annoying.

As it happens, around the time that Christmas hit, I hit a blogging rut. So, instead of writing, I started thinking. Here’s what I came up with.

• Blog posts don’t have to be master essays. They can be, but there’s nothing wrong with a short blog post.
• I’m not great at writing when I’m not inspired. I’m absolutely certain that I’d rather write less, but write when I feel I actually have something to say.
• My new job is wonderful. This includes being wonderfully busy. Interestingly enough it’s given me lots of ideas for posts I’d like to write, as a lot of what I do is applicable to the music business.
• Video is cool. I like video. Expect to see more of it here soon, including an interview with Juakali and a short clip of Walt Riberio, talking about his newest project, For Orchestra.
• I don’t want to cover the news. As much as I love knowing what’s going on, I don’t want this blog to become just another blog covering information you can easily find elsewhere.

Above all, I’ve learned that this outlet is a great way for me to express longer form thoughts, which I miss doing.

So no, I’m not apoloizing. It’s OK to take a step back and it’s OK to re-evaluate. Some would even say it’s necessary.

Photo provided by MightyBoyBrian

Break out the horn section and tell the drumline “drumroll, please!” – we’re starting and I have news to share!

As the title says, I’m joining Radian6 as a Community Manager!!  Much like my co-worker Teresa Basich, I’m excited to announce this news and I’m looking forward to getting started.

As David Alston recently put it, I’m “joining a jazz trio for daily jam sessions.”

Allow me to get a bit sappy for a moment…

For those that may know me personally or professionally, you may know that 2009 was a year of change.

My professional life changed as I transitioned from a marketing role with a B2B telecommunications company to a marketing role with a B2B community platform vendor called Ripple6.

My personal life changed as I dealt with cancer in the family and moving to New York City, seemingly all at once.  2009 was the year that my little sister graduated from college, the year that two of my best friends got married, and the year that I truly realized I felt at home for the first time in my life. Thanks, New York!

The year wasn’t always easy, but it was always rewarding.  I was happy to wake up and go to work with my very talented colleagues at Ripple6. I was excited to start this blog, and I was excited to meet new people and form new friendships in New York and around the US.

When the year changed from 2009 to 2010, I was celebrating the New Year near Times Square with a few hundred of my closest friends. With the sounds of “Happy New Year!” and “To new beginnings!” ringing in my ears I realized that while 2009 had been full of change, 2010 would be the year to change them all.

There’s a saying in New York City that “your first year is the toughest.” Going by that saying the next few years should be smooth sailing, as this very day is my 1-year anniversary in New York, and my first day on the job with Radian6.

To say that I’m excited to join the Radian6 team is a complete understatement.  I’ve paid close attention to them for awhile now and have always thought the world of the company, the culture, and the team.  I feel honored to be joining a team I so respect and admire as a Community Manager, and I’m looking forward to the steps we’ll be taking together as the year unfolds.

In my new role you’ll see me take a more active part in the Radian6 conversations happening across the web on places like Twitter and blogs. I’ll be helping the existing Community team to grow the Radian6 community as well as contributing content on topics relevant to my role and the company. The “never met a stranger” in me loves that I’ll be  acting as a first point of contact, and my inner travel bug is excited about the chance to attend industry events and put handles and URLs with faces and names.

I’ve never been one to have a “dream job” in mind, simply because I know that my criteria for that job will change as my career progresses.  Saying that, this role is analogous to having your first record go Platinum – you know you’ve worked hard to get here, and you can’t wait to see what comes next.

Memories are powerful. Some songs play a leading role in certain memories, while others appear as a backup role.

I recently posted a question on my Twitter account (@misskatiemo) asking people what songs they associated with certain memories.  Their answers are below.

Carla Lynne Hall: “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and The Shondells because it reminds me of growing up in Miami, with its blue skies and sunny days. Whenever I hear it, I think of carefree days of being a kid, with all of the time in the world to just dream and play. Ahhh….

Prescott Perez-Fox:  When I hear “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles, I am wandering through a church yard in North London on my way to work.

Amy Garland:  Footloose – This was my favorite movie growing up (still is), and I always loved dancing to the end (prom scene). Whenever the song plays at a wedding, my sister and/or I try to get everyone to form two lines and take turns dancing down the middle (like the movie). This song always brings great memories from weddings, etc to mind!

Andrew Stugots:  New Years day 1999 my cousin and best friend in the world passed away after a life long battle with brain cancer. He was found laying in the parking lot of his job.  Phillip lived life as if it was his last day on earth and pushed others to do the same. A year later I met a seer, Jennifer. I never believed in this type of stuff but take it for what you will. Over dinner with others she leaned over to me and said “Phillip said to tell you “Don’t Dream It’s Over“. I sat there with my mouth agape, she continued “Yeah, he is just singing that song over and over again ‘Hey now, hey now, dont dream its over. There is freedom within, there is freedom without….” and then she said, he waved and walked away. The song still gives me goosebumps and will make me get teary eyed.

My own memory is along the line of Andrew’s.  Whenever I hear “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “Amazing Grace” I think of my Grandmother playing the piano as childhood versions of me and my younger sister bound up the stairs to her house.

Chris Brogan recently wrote about “Emotions At A Distance” – or, in other words, remembering that the people we connect and deal with from behind computer screens are just that – people.

It’s easy to get caught up in the nuances of your work from inside a practice room or behind a computer monitor. Not so easy when you’re performing your music in front of a crowd, or get recognized by a fan on the street.  Music connects people across age differences, language barriers, and continents.  Always remember that people have a choice to listen to your music, and that the music you create forms a very real part of the soundtrack of their lives.

What memories do you associated with music?

I bought my domain a full seven months before launching this blog.  You see, I had a slight dilemma to solve before putting pen to paper, digitally speaking.

At first I thought I should pick a topic to blog about and create a niche for myself.  The trouble with that arose when I thought about how many other, more well-established (ok, established… at all) blogs were already out there on almost every topic imaginable.

I did a few searches on topics I thought I could create enough content to blog about, and quickly came to the conclusion that my assumption was completely correct, there were tons of blogs already created.

So then I started thinking that the blog should be about me.  This topic had a few attractions.

1. I was really interested in me
2. I would always have something to write about without the limits of a “niche”
3. Did I mention the blog would be about me?
4. I’m a pretty interesting person, so the blog would surely be entertaining

It was settled.  Screw a “niche”. The blog would be about me, me and more me.

That, naturally, brought up the easiest of easy questions to answer…. Who Am I?

Well.. I am…

Hm.

I’m……

Hmm…

I’m a girl – slightly shorter than average – whose world tends to revolve around music, family and friends, traveling, digital marketing, sleeping in and devouring books like the world is running out of paper.

About that whole music and digital marketing thing… see, the funny thing was, is that those were the topics I originally wanted to write about in this very blog.

It seems I’ve come full circle.

Officially, this blog is about music and digital marketing. More specifically, how digital marketing has influenced music, and how the industry is (or isn’t) adapting to the new landscape. Unofficially it will feature many posts about music and digital marketing, and a few more about random topics.

Please a comment and introduce yourself.  I’d like to get to know my readers!