Promoting yourself in your institution
Written on November 5, 2010 by TeenPublish Dude
Category: Establishing who you are
Promoting yourself in your institution
Recently, someone very close to me had his first gig as a DJ in a high school Sadie Hawkins dance. He had been learning, preparing and honing on his skills as a DJ for several months. I went there to help him manage his first gig, and to promote him. First mistake: we didn’t promote him enough beforehand.
Listen and hear others
The first step to properly promoting yourself is, you can’t be shy. If you notice, every well known person or person providing a service has something interesting to say, or is very outspoken. Yet there are many popular people that stay reserved as well. But one thing they have in common, they are GOOD listeners. While being reserved is different than being shy, being quiet at the right time has many advantages. For being a good listener, you show the person you are communicating with that you are providing your full, undivided attention to them. The advantages you get, is that you get to gain knowledge and extract the milk of every conversation.
Build a hype
If you notice, the best and brightest online companies somehow build a crazy hype before releasing the beta of a product, or the beta itself becomes the hype. So the same works in DJing, in order to get as many people to know who’s in charge of the music of the next party, we should have built a hype.
We bought our first DJ business cards from VistaPrint. Unfortunately they were a little smaller than expected, but for a first timer it was fine. 1500 small business cards for $50, you tell me if you think that’s worth it. That’s the only promotion step we took. We will get into details of a first hand DJ experience in a different blog, but when asking the lady in charge of the event at the front door for a promotion for the DJ who was basically VOLUNTEERING to DJ the dance with a small little tip jar, she denied my request stating “We’re not allowed to hand out promotions”. That was a bit annoying. I didn’t argue since this was his first event, but I’m not going to tolerate that a second time.
At the end of the show, the tip jar had a measly 20 bucks in it (mostly given by the nice adults chaperoning the event), and I was handing out promotion cards by myself left and right at the door. In an honest speak, my brother did a good job Djing his first event, albeit there were a few mistakes and a few songs missing from our request playlist, we still managed to pull through nicely. Songs like “Cha-Cha slide” and “Soulja boy” really got the dance floor shakin. I asked some of my brother’s friends to pass out the cards while they were dancing, which they were happy to do, but weren’t there at the end to help pass the cards.
Get yourself out there through any form of networking/media
Upon reading the school newspaper a couple of days after event, we realized that the “thanks to Band” for hosting the event was posted, but not even a word of thanks to the DJ, who volunteered to do the most important aspect of the party. At first read, the initial reaction was upsetting, pissed off, and that the skills were undermined. However, the answer is simple : the newspaper did NOT know about the DJ or that he was an important contribution to the event.
Therefore, make SURE that whether it’s a newspaper, social media platforms, youtube, word of mouth, that let’s people know YOU ARE THE BOSS. That YOU are providing a service, and it needs to be clearly known WHO you are.
What we should have done
The advantage to being in school is, you are in a social network in itself which is a big group of people you can use to market yourself. Everyone knows who you are, so being outspoken in person is important. So in that case, facebook and twitter should secondary. What we should have done in this situation, is what all general clubs do, is to speak to journalists (such as yearbook and newspaper) around the school, make sure the administrators put the name in the newsletters, make creative posters/announcements and place it around the school, with a label of the DJ who’s hosting the specialties of the event. So anyone who walks around the school will visually the name of the DJ, and that BRAND will stick in their head (More on branding below). That kind of free billboard won’t happen in a regular city, so take advantage of it now!
Branding – YOU are the brand
All movie stars do this. Hollywoord and Bollywood are the two biggest movie industries out there out of many countries, why? It’s because the way their cinema business works, which is through movie “stars” with their own brand of being a big shot. How come when you think of Johnny Depp, you subconciously think of a “great actor”? Because he’s built himself a brand name of his own name. Why when we think of Sarah Palin, we think of “VPilf”? Unfortunately through circumstances beyond her control, that’s become her brand, possibly due to s tring of ironic moments in her campaign. What really sucks about branding is, if you mess up, it’s really hard to pull your name back to the A-list. However, it’s totally possible.
So remember, YOU are the brand. You have to develop yourself as a person who wants to be heard, and stay heard. For that you have to social network in anyway possible. Keep yourself up to date and sharp, with knowledge in all areas of your brand. Mostly you have to have a passion for it. For example, I constantly read, because it increases my knowledge and increases my capacity to learn. A majority of people who read & research end up with more creativity and knowledge beyond expectations in their brands. And one thing, don’t deviate from your brand by keep switching names unless it really helps you out (That’s usually the case with a lot of internet startups). Don’t get overwhelmed by wanting a huge fan base, if your brand is good enough with the work it does, you will be getting just that and an big enough fan base beyond what you expect.
By the way, this person’s DJ nick is DJ Komotion (his brand), and he’ll be spinning his way near you pretty soon.
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