Digital Marketing Mastery Journal

To me, marketing has been somewhat of a conundrum in terms of what works and doesn't work within a particular industry or market. What I have learned in this clsss has provided me some valuable tools and a deft understanding of market as a whole, specifically on the digital platform. The Digital Marketing course could not have happened at a better time because my company, Juxta, has recently been registered as a legitimate business entity. My business partners and I have put tireless effort into our production campaign as well as the administrative tasks that are critical to building a consumer oriented company. Marketing plays a major role in that task list. Juxta is a solely ecommerce based business, so search engine optimization and search engine marketing are essential to bring in as much traffic and recognition as possible. Juxta is now going to be using Google Analytics and Ad Words once the website is completed thanks to learning about how to use it in class. Since we are marketing primarily on YouTube, and using it as a stream of revenue, understanding how to monetize our content is extremely important. Using keywords especially in the titles of our videos will hopefully make them stand out. Of the 10 months of being in this program, this has probably been one of the most useful lessons learned. I am a strong believer in building a brand and nat just advertising a product, so I feel that Organic SEO is the best way to go for Juxta because I want my customers to believe in the brand. One of my favorite quotes from Seth Godin is: "The brave thing is to find the unspeakable fear and speak it. And to stop rehearsing the easy fears that have become habits." This relates to business in general. What I hope for in the future is that I can retain all of the knowledge that I have learned this month and continue to use it for Juxta or whatever business that I find myself venturing in.

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Producing Modern Metal

There are a lot of opinions out there on the “right” way to record and produce   extreme hardcore and metal bands. Even some of the best engineers in the industry will disagree on the right tone, the right drum heads, mic placement etc. I found a good article on the website Sound On Sound, on some cool concepts of the process from pre-production to finalizing the mix. One interesting facts about metal music is that it contrasts from pop and mainstream rock in the context that pre-production does not take near as long. This is because the structure and arrangement of such songs have to mold to the format and length of commercial radio airplay. You will  never hear 10 minute Between the Buried and Me songs on any local rock station, so there is no need for deciding those specific details. Another great takeaway from this article was understanding the importance of using clicks. From my own personal experience as a musician as well as producer, this is paramount when playing music in the metal genre. Most modern metal bands play at a fairly high bpm. Keeping that in mind a producer has to sometimes stress the importance of that to a band even if they are strongly opposed to the idea. It makes the songs sound tighter and gives a professional sounding recording versus an amateur demo. Another article that I found was an interview with one of my personal favorite engineers and mentor Jamie King. Jamie has produced over 500 metal and rock albums, including most notably, progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me. He takes a solid and simple approach to producing, mixing and sudo-mastering.  He believes that a good producer of music should give the client what they want. His interview explains it all in detail.