We attended Social Media Club in Sydney, Australia last week - where the special guest was MC Hammer. As the 14th most influential Twitterer in the world and 1,640,866 followers, (@MCHammer) is the bees knees when it comes to social media.

A self-confessed twitter addict with screens and smartphones set up around his home allowing him to be almost constantly in touch with the stream, he even admitted to having a desktop in his bathroom!

Six Social Media Rules by Mc Hammer!

1. Be yourself and make sure that no one else is telling your story, i.e. don’t let others tweet for you.
2. You cannot stop information from getting out there- so use all the tools available including traditional ones to make sure your message is correct and you have controlled it.
3. Match you tweets with your image.
4. Establish the culture of your brand and block people who don’t have anything to add to your brand. If people are negative to you, block them.
5. Your skill set is sharpened by the way you communicate on twitter because it’s in the public realm and how you handle it will be viewed.
6. Don’t be a third hand user- be in it, use all the channels available to you and use them well.

Check out a summary of the event here. All in all a really great night and MC Hammer knocked the socks off most of us with his knowledge, skills and imparting wisdom.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We’re getting very excited here at Splendid because tomorrow night is the Twitgigs Experiment; a truly unique, interactive, entirely Twitter sourced, live music event.

It’s organised by up and coming music blogger and avid Twitterer, Nisha Lakhani, who’s making waves in the London music blogging circuit. Nisha has been awarded a £2,000 bursary by Smirnoff Night Vision for her original nightlife concept happening at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane and is supported by ‘Essay Like Nephew’, ‘Seal Cub Clubbing Club’ and Mike Dignam who have all been sourced to take part in the music clash via Twitter. Each of the artists appearing on the night has also provided an untitled track which the Twitter public will name on the night.

Limited tickets can be purchased on the door at £5, but to avoid queues and disappointment, might be an idea to get your tickets in advance from www.twitgigs.eventbrite.com

Follow Nisha, Twitgigs, Essay Like Nephew, Seal Cub Clubbing Club and Mike Dignam here:

Essay Like Nephew: @EssayLikeNephew
Seal Cub Clubbing Club: @thesccc
Mike Dignam: @mikedignammusic
Nisha Lakhani: @nishajl
Twitgigs: @twitgigs

See you there Tweeps!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The Smirnoff Co. is pleased to announce details of Museum Sessions, a unique event set to hit Manchester which has been awarded a £2,000 bursary through the Smirnoff Night Vision® initiative.

Nightlife luminaries including Radio 1’s Rob da Bank, Cream honcho James Barton, club promotions agency Don’t Panic and Mark Ronson’s agent Cris Hearn voted Museum Sessions as one of the UK’s most original nights.

On entering The Manchester Museum, guests will pass the UK’s second biggest collection of Egyptian Mummies, dodge the claws of a huge T-Rex skeleton and step into a weird and wonderful time warp as the sound of live acoustic music fills the Victorian Mammals Gallery. The space, complete with original fixtures and fittings and totally untouched since the 1800s, is home to a bizarre and eerie collection of ancient animal specimens from around the world.

Visitors can wander amongst life size tigers, lions, polar bears and other unusual animals, whilst enjoying sets from Jamie Scott and the Town, Liam Frost, and Kathryn Edwards, all performed beneath a giant whale skeleton, suspended from the ceiling. Museum Sessions follows a successful series of Smirnoff Night Vision events in London during April 2009. The promoters behind The Hothouse Revue, People Are Germs, DJ Flicks and 3D Disco Goes 360 were awarded four London bursaries of £10k and, seperately, organised nights across the city featuring, rollerskates, 1930s decadence, cinematics and 3D visuals in a 360 environment.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The geniuses at Run Riot are rallying to break the world record for the most people doing the Thriller dance…in one place! The ‘Thriller Dance FlashMob’ is scheduled for the next Bank Holiday weekend on Saturday at noon in Hyde Park.

Get out your sequins glove…

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The search for the ‘underground’ is like the unicorn of club culture. As a nation we’re always looking for the next big thing before the mainstream grabs hold of it and turns it from novel to humdrum. Nights like Stick it on in Brighton and Tayo’s Tracksuit Party in London started out as in-the-know shindigs promoted by word-of-mouth that grew virally and organically into part of mainstream club culture. Now, we here at Splendid Towers aren’t saying that’s a bad thing, as something only becomes mainstream when people like it, and you can’t stop people liking stuff!

But fear not intrepid club goer, for new parties are springing up all the time, you just need to know where to look. Witness Bring Your Parents Records in London, the clubbing equivalent of Ronseal, this party invites you to raid your parents’ record collection, blow the dust of that Barry Manilow 12 inch you once used as a frisbee and share it on a loud sound system at a bar in Camden. Simple, viral and utterly Brilliant.

Beg, steal, borrow, then play out!

There’s plenty more to choose from too, just cast your eye over the Observer’s recent (and fantastic) Secret Britain series, which delves into the sweaty underbelly of this fare land to uncover the hidden gems in all things from quirky pubs to forgotten countryside walks. Read more here and feel free to let us in on any clubbing secrets you’ve stumbled upon.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

These days, all you have to do to get people excited online is offer content that they can make their own. Exhibit A: the new Cadbury’s ad with the cutesy eyebrow dancing act. We’ve all seen it by now. Had a bit of a chuckle. But have you seen the remixes? We likey even more.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDz9A0qfSvU&hl=en&fs=1]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

What a week. Andy got a new baby, America got a new president…there’s a lot of love in the air and we’re feeling good on this fine Friday.

Throughout the week, we keep a kind of cool hunter mini-blog on the Splendid website of things we love.

Here’s a roundup of what Splendid Loves this week:

Bucket drumming – as seen on Miami Beach (Nick)

Gather a load of pots, pans and garbage, sit on the street and bash hell out if until it sounds as good as this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGBCg-qgFI&hl=en&fs=1] 

This Is Where We Live (Liz)

Imagine a world made with books. This little stop-motion film for 4th Estate Publishers’ 25th Anniversary, does just that. A nice idea from the guys at Apt Studio and Asylum Films.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

GirlTalk (Lucy)

DJ from the States who mixes bits from the tracks we’re embarrassed to love. Also mixes stuff you wouldn’t dream of putting together - Jackson 5 and Queen. One for a car journey. The more you listen, the more you’ll like it.

www.myspace.com/girltalk

Check out the rest of our Splendid Loves weekly on www.splendidcomms.com.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

OK, by now it’s 359 days. But who’s counting.

Despite economic dominoes, an onslaught of winter vomiting disease (wash your hands, people!), and other myriad woes plaguing our nation, we’re feeling pretty optimistic about 2009. We’ve successfully surpassed the most stressful day of the year, so things are looking up already.

The Workhouse Diaries blog is going to be dedicated to what gets us buzzing here at Splendid. From compelling voices to new music talent to emerging media to clever ideas to things that make us laugh to cultural events around the world to what’s happening down the road, you’ll find a little bit of everything — and hopefully, a lot of inspiration. (You probably won’t find many lengthy cerebral commentaries, but we can point you in the right direction if that’s what you’re after.)

So, here goes diary entry numero uno: Music. It’s what we eat / sleep / breathe. In 2008, we worked with mammoth music talent, including the world’s biggest DJ (Tiesto), some hot producers (Mark Ronson and Pharrell Williams) and some legends (Grandmaster Flash, Guitar Shorty, Duran Duran). Inspired by music’s past and present, we decided to invest in music’s future — kids who rock.

Instead of lining your recycling bin, we spent our Chrismas card budget on some brand spanking new equipment for Haringey Shed, a charity that provides music and theatre workshops for children and young people with learning disabilities in London.

Thanks very much to Youth Music, UK’s largest children’s music charity, for hooking us up. We’ll be sure to blog about Haringey Shed’s progress. (Fingers crossed someday they’ll need a cracking communications agency to launch their first single.)

Happy New Year, all.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!