Hey Everyone – I first want to say, that I am completely thankful for all of you, every day. I have such great friends online, and have so much fun with all of you. I am truly blessed to be able to count a lot of you as my friends (You know who you are!). If I was to list you all it would just be a huge endless list – weed through my twitter/facebook/googleplus friends and you’ll find them. I wanted to revisit this topic since its been almost two years (DEAR GOD TIME IS FLYING) since I wrote about a story about social media and friends (it involved king cake).
I don’t mean for this to be a huge post or anything but just a quick update on some things and my thoughts on Social Media and why its important to Network & spend time having fun with your internet friends – while producing valuable content and helping others. Just want to give you guys a peek into my daily life, since this is also my personal blog, I don’t usually get a chance to say much outside of the normal posting schedule, I figure this will spice things up if I do it randomly – so enjoy (or ignore. lol)
Social Media Friends & Relationships
While that cartoon is fairly true (and funny) for the majority – Over the years I have met some AWESOME people via social media. I have also generated a good portion of my business contacts from social media (mostly twitter). I can honestly say without social media, I’d not have had nearly as good and fulfilling past couple of years. I am very thankful for everything (and everyone) it has brought my way.
I have had a lot of fun with everyone, and learned so much from everyone. One thing that I never even thought of when I started getting involved in the social media scene was getting anything from anyone for free – but it happens, a lot. in social media. Some weeks I am very reminded of this fact, the past couple of weeks have definitely reminded me of this. I try to write a shoutout and thanks to my cool friends that send me stuff, but I am always so busy it (with many other things, all the time) fall by the wayside and I never get a chance to do it! So I am going to try to shoutout to everyone in this post that has sent me stuff in the past year or so.
I’ve gotten t-shirts from a few awesome people – I need to get some pics of the older ones, but I got an awesome AllTop t-shirt from the awesome Guy Kawasaki. If you don’t know that guy, definitely check him out – truly an inspirational person. Nice guy too!
My Bro and Twitter Master Extraordinaire Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudios) has hooked me up with a few awesome things over the years so a big shoutout to him – if your on twitter and not following him (what is wrong with you!?) go do it 😉 – He can tell you himself how awesome social networking is, he has had brands like Audi loan him an Audi A8 to test drive!!! (how freaking cool is that!? Just be an awesome and informative, nice guy, on twitter, and you get stuff like that for free. It pays to be kind, and be yourself.)
I also got a t-shirt from obox design from back in the day! They are some awesome a nice dudes – Thanks guys!!
Social Media Schwag
“It is more blessed to give than to receive. Because in giving, although it doesn’t seem so, You Receive.”
-Desmond Tutu
Ok now on to the stuff I got the past few weeks from awesome people & companies (with pics!) (P.S. no one asked me to say anything about this stuff, I just thought I would since it all came from Social Media & the relationships built there. Also it really doesn’t matter that you sometimes get free stuff from social media, it’s just the little things that your friends there do to brighten your day! Selflessness is the best part of Social Media. there are a TON of people on there, that help others for no personal gain. Just goes to show, that when you Give, you truly receive. So be a giver.)
Stay Lovely Shirt
So I got to pick this out from the lovelyjunkie.com store (store link). I won it by leaving a comment on a blog post by @paul_pants.
So what was awesome about this (other than its a nice comfy shirt, fits well, I like it! and I am usually picky about shirts. the actual shirt is made by American Apparel) is the packaging it came in! I was just expecting a t-shirt in a box. But this came in a re-sealable bag – that had even more stuff in it! If you can see it in the picture, the bag has their logo on it, and inside it has a bunch of other stuff with their logo on it, like pins, and business cards – which are super awesome. They EVEN include a garbage pail kids card. I had TOTALLY forgotten about those. but I thought that was awesome, I hadn’t seen one since I was literally like 8 years old. Way to really nail the packaging and even throw in a bit of nostalgia too – I was impressed. So to Paul Pants. I say Thank you!!
Klout Schwag
Ok so I recently got into Klout – took me a while to sign up, but I am glad I did now that I know what its good for – Free stuff! If you haven’t signed up for it yet, you might as well. You can only lose by Not signing up. (just another account to add to the list lol)
Here are just a few things that I got via Klout lately
Axe Spike Hair Gel
so got this from klout for the Axe promo – Axe even talks to you on twitter, which is pretty awesome :). Anytime a big brand will joke with you on a social network – that is cool. And good brand management.
Of course I tried it out, I like it – I even still have some left (unlike spike master @mayhemstudios lol jk, he asked Axe for more, and they even gave it to him!). Although I don’t usually “Spike” my hair, it works well for that or just regular ole hair gel
I tried it out on me and one of my little munchkins 🙂 – We look totally rad! (he does anyway haha)
Business Cards from Moo
So those are my moo mini cards (designed by yours truly)! I picked them up from the klout perk of free moo mini cards – had to pay $6 or so for shipping, but small price to pay to get something for free. Especially something that is custom designed! So I was impressed with how the cards looked, but what impressed me more, was again, the awesome packaging! It was so nice I hardly wanted to open it, and yes I still keep my cards in that sweet little white box. (and no I didn’t have fun picking them all up after I dumped them lol. These are actually my first business cards ever, since I have NO LOCAL CLIENTS at all – It really is more of a novelty. All of my clients are out of state, mostly in California and New York (and the UK) but mostly all over the world. So I will mostly just hand these out to friends, family and anyone I meet.
Well that about does it for this post, was much longer than I anticipated it to be lol.
Hope everyone enjoyed it! And I hope it inspired you to get serious about Social Media if you are a business, a brand, or just someone trying to get a job. Social media can open up all sorts of doors if you let it. So let it do its thing! while you be yourself and do what you love.
Oh – and of course, if you want to send me some schwag, feel free 😉 (email me for my address if you really want to lol)
As always – I Appreciate you all.
– Andy Sowards Signing Off
Oh and if you wanna check out that post I did two years ago on the similar subject definitely check out….
What is king cake? A Story About Friends & Social Media
Oh and finally if YOU guys have a story about social media that you would like to share, could be whatever you want – we would LOVE to hear about it below in the comments! Thanks everyone!
You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @andysowards and like us on facebook @andysowardsfan! We are also on that new fangled G+ doohikey.
