The Mix Tape, Vol. 38
Welcome!
I don’t know if it’s Friday, Tuesday, or 1983. But let’s roll with another edition of The Mix Tape.
Write better, or face Zoom doom
If you’re working from home these days, you are painfully aware of the importance of writing with brevity, clarity, and specificity. Failing to write well leads to confusion, which leads to more Zoom meetings (ugh).
You also need to be interesting when you write—including work emails.
Your emails are competing with calls from the boss, the dryer beeping, and a three-year-old smearing strawberry jelly on the wall.
This is the time to improve your writing. Here are a few recent Tweets with great writing tips:
Keep your emails short. Use bullets. Be clear about what request from the recipient.
Always edit before you hit send. Cut ruthlessly.
The last sentence is 🔥:
34 lessons learned from running a $65M affiliate marketing program
I published a new, 2,500-word post this week, summing up the lessons learned while growing an affiliate marketing program from $7 million to $65 million.
Of course, the secret was having a great team, with members who taught me all the most valuable lessons.
A new app for faster and smoother travel
I’m working with Tampa-based, CēVē, on messaging, positioning, and marcom in advance of the company’s first-ever app launch.
The CeVe app will turbo-boost your favorite iPhone map with:
Red light timing
Speed advisories
Alerts warning you of events that clog up traffic, like schools getting out, concerts, or sporting events.
(You remember when we used to have events, right?)
Anyway, I built a new web site for CeVe using Squarespace:
The CeVe app will initially work in Tampa and Northern Virginia, with more markets coming online soon after.
Soon, we’ll launch a newsletter in advance of the app’s release. Lots more to come from Ceve.
The era of the music livestream
We are starring into the abyss of a concertless summer, but not all is lost.
Lots of artists have been streaming live online, or sharing past concerts, and some of the content is pretty great. Here are some of my favorites so far:
The Dave Matthews Band Drive-In
Each Wednesday at 8PM, the DMB shares a past show. We watched the first edition this week and the video and audio quality are both great:
Both kids were annoyed with the duration and volume of this show as it played in our home, making it a total winner.
Yacht Rock Revue covers
Personal favorite Yacht Rock Revue brought it strong with this cover of James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend:”
The band later added a rendition of “Hot Rod Hearts,” featuring the song’s original vocalist, Robbie Dupree:
You have to love the Brady Bunch screen setup.
Yacht Rock Revue has been very busy during the quarantine, and regularly streams live performances by various band members on their Facebook page.
Jason Sapen
Mich-iana singer Jason Sapen livestreams from his home basement bar, covering an insane range of artists, from Pearl Jam to Neil Diamond and everything in between.
Sapen is workhorse, often playing three-hour long shows as he bounces between his guitar, his piano, and a healthy number of Patrón shots.
Visit his Facebook page for his live-streams, which usually happen on Friday or Saturday nights.
Last weekend, we invited some friends to our lanai and pretended we were at an outdoor Jason Sapen show:
Great music is still out there, even if you’re at home.
Thanks for reading!
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See you next week!