Brandswag featured in the Oklahoma City Journal Record

It may be a surprise to many people that my company… Brandswag has an office in Oklahoma City. The OKC Office is managed by my business partner, Brandon Coon. I am excited to announce that Brandswag is being featured in the Oklahoma City Journal today. Thank you so much to the individuals who have helped us grow in the Oklahoma City market. We could not have done it without you!

Social media marketers tagged for ‘Dummies’

OKLAHOMA CITY – Starting and maintaining a business in today’s world is brave entrepreneurship. Writing a book in the middle of that process is icing on the cake.

Kyle Lacy and Brandon Coon started BrandSwag, a social media marketing firm, in 2007. Just when they’d gotten their feet wet, the Dummies came calling. The line of books touting expertise in a digestible format wanted a Twitter Marketing for Dummies tome, and Lacy won the contract. In six short weeks, he wrote the book, which will ship to bookstores in two weeks.

Lacy, CEO of BrandSwag, heads the Indianapolis office of the company, and Coon, president, oversees the Oklahoma City office. The Dummies project was too good to pass up because its content came straight from their business strategy.

“It’s hard for me to say that everyone already knows what social media marketing means. In reality, I’m part of the minority,” Lacy said. “But this book doesn’t dumb it down; it makes it easier to learn and apply to what you’re doing in your business life.”

Lacy signed a contract to write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, but BrandSwag also plans to buy the books wholesale and resell them, Lacy said. More than financial gain, however, the book is about brand power, he said.

“It adds instant credibility to us as business owners, especially as young 25- and 26-year-olds,” Lacy said.

To read the rest of the article… click here: Oklahoma City Social Media Marketers’ tagged for Dummies

Talk About Who You Are Not What You Do

It can seem pretty simple right?

Talk about who you are… how you go about your daily routine… how YOU sell your product, service, or brand…

It seems fairly simple.. and yet.. it is one of the harder things for entrepreneurs and sales professionals. I am speaking from experience here! It is so hard to write about yourself instead of your industry. An industry is proven. An industry has research reports, professional opinions, and hundreds of pages of content.

There is only one of YOU… which is the point of this blog post.

There are millions of individuals in your business… in your industry. A portion of the individuals are writing content to spread over the many corners of the web. They are writing about the same thing… over and over… and over… and over again. Where do you differentiate yourself? How do you write and distribute content that will stand out.. that will drive business?

I will always resort back to the line inspired by Getting To Yes!: Customers are people first. People buy from people. Remember that they next time you sit down to write a blog post.

Write about what you do! There is only one of you… and thousands of them.

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Think Big and then Think Small

I’m not going to lie to you. This blog post is completely… and utterly… inspired by Jay Baer over at Convince and Convert. His blog post titled Get More Bait in the Water has a great thought that pushed me to write this blog.

“Thought leadership via social media content is about thinking big. And then thinking small.”

I believe that we are so focused on thinking big that we deny the concept of thinking small when deciding on strategy and implementation. It can lead to inconsistent messaging and promotion. We are talking about the death of many small to mid sized companies.

The overall strategy of a specific marketing initiative is the concept of thinking big. How are we (as a company) going to achieve our goals? How are we going to move from point A to point B and dominate the market? The overall goal of strategy planning is to think big! But creativity can only take you so far. I can use my own social media and design company as an example.

We do a ton of creative brainstorming. My role as head of business development allows me the luxury of thinking big.. 24/7. Early on we ran into the problem of implementation. We had some huge ideas both internally and externally but they were not implemented properly (for our clients or our company). My business partner, Brandon Coon, took it upon himself to be the implementation guru.  We hired an awesome company ran by Nicole Bickett to help us with process and we acquired an excellent project manager named Amy Rowe.

It is so important to remember the small things that make a BIG IDEA work. The same concept applies to your social media strategy and implementation. You have big goals but how are you going to accomplish the social media goals?

A top ranked blog or seach engine ranking takes small posts and careful planning to reach that coveted spot. Great lead generation tools for your sales team takes little ideas implemented over.. and over.. and over to work. In the words of the great Chet Holmes, “Pig headed discipline and determination is key to business success.”

Be pig headed and stubborn… but remember planning and implementaxtion.

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Driving Leads Through Facebook and Twitter Seminar

Brandswag will be hosting a seminar dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of increasing lead generation and MAKING MORE MONEY on Twitter and Facebook.

You’ve heard the buzz around the micro-blogging site Twitter and the social networking site Facebook… but now is the time to make it work for your business! We will teach you how to intimately use 5 of the main key tools of both Twitter and Facebook. You will learn how to create and facilitate relationships with your current and potential clients!

Other tips you will learn:

• How to increase your close rate using Twitter, Facebook, and social media
• How to drive an increase in lead generation using social media
• Make more money… period.

You will be able to leave the meeting and apply the concepts that very day!

The Power of a Decision. Be A Risk Taker!

There are times when I stumble through Seth Godin’s blog and he rocks my life into oblivion… this morning it happened again. Seth has a post about decision making and the power of making a decision in the world of business growth… as many decisions as possible. Interesting thought right?

From Seth’s blog:

No decision is a decision as well, the decision not to decide. Not deciding is usually the wrong decision. If you are the go-to person, the one who can decide, you’ll make more of a difference. It doesn’t matter so much that you’re right, it matters that you decided.

Don’t you feel like standing up and singing hallelujah? Don’t you feel like making some strategic decisions? I know I do.

What is keeping you from moving to the next step of business growth? Is it a marketing initiative? Is it jumping into social media (God forbid)? Are you letting yourself make decisions that might have a negative effect on your bottom line… that is key. Successful businesses take risks and live to tell about it.

And if you don’t live to tell about it…

At least you can say you tried your best and gave it your all. If you don’t make risky decisions and adapt to the changing world… you may be dusting off that resume.

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11,000 Reasons to Listen to the FTC

Hannah is an attorney at Hollingsworth & Zivitz, PC where she focuses her practice on business law and entrepreneurial services. Hannah is one of the few attorneys in Indiana to offer experienced legal guidance on promotional law, including advertising, sweepstakes, contests, consumer privacy, and e-commerce related issues.

Have you ever used your blog to review a product you received for free?  Have you ever offered a fellow blogger a deal where you review his product or service if he reviews yours?  Did you disclose that deal to your readers?  If not, it is time to start.

This week, the FTC announced new rules aimed at increasing transparency used in social media advertising.  Starting December 1, 2009, bloggers and other users of social media such as Twitter and Facebook must disclose if they have received any type of payment in exchange for promotion, advertising or endorsement.  This seems to include in-kind exchanges, free product or good old fashioned money.

Almost every business has a blog these days.  It is a free, easy way to reach existing and potential customers.  And there is a lot of trade going on out there in the blogosphere.  Bloggers commonly receive gratis products or services in exchange for a positive write up.  Companies who send out free stuff have nothing to lose, because if a blogger doesn’t like their product or service, the blog simply doesn’t review or promote it.

In many communities there is a spider web of connections among successful social media sites.  But the era of “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours is over.”  Bloggers who promote one another for pay, free goods, free services or simply shared promotion now face significant penalties from the Federal Trade Commission, up to $11,000 per violation!

What does this mean for your business?  Well some common social media practices that may be affected include anything from writing a positive comment on Facebook in exchange for a free hat to writing a recommendation for a CPA on LinkedIn for a discount on your taxes.  You may think that the blogosphere is so vast and there is too many infractions out there for the FTC to catch you, but don’t forget about Naptster.  The federal government cracked down on anyone and everyone, including teenagers living in their parent’s homes, simply for downloading a few songs.  The FTC is primed to make an example of any business violating these new rules.  Don’t subject your business to an $11,000 fine.  If you are promoting another company’s product or service on a social media site, and you have ANY kind of relationship with that company, be sure to disclose it.

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Defining Change As An Individual

I found this amazing example of kinetic typography last night and it created an idea that is not new… but needs to be rehearsed and rewritten hundreds if not thousands of times. Do we fully understand the power we have as an individual? Do we fully understand the power we have as a community of individuals?

I am not speaking of change in a political sense but change in a single… solitary way… a change in individuality that has the power to spread across the many platforms of communication afforded to us.

Smaller Indiana is just one example in the many different platforms that allow your individuality to shine through… the many platforms the allow for ONE person to make a change that could empower thousands of people toward the same goal.

“In my observation it is you that creates the change by challenging your own individuality…creating that positive atmosphere for yourself and every person surrounded by your presence. And in the end it is all in simple action… whether it is conducting by individuals as a whole or just by one person.”

Because of the tools afforded to us by the Internet and technology… we have the ability to spread our own message to hundreds of thousands of people…

What is YOUR message? Are you challenging it?

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Screw Stats. It is about Portability and Experiences

I am co-hosting a webinar tomorrow with Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware entitled Getting a Grip on Social Media. The first slide of my presentation simples says: Screw Stats. The whole concept behind the slide is the idea that we can run around statistics and figures all we want but the most important thing to understand is the future of portability and experiences in social media.

Portability

Portability is mobility. The mobile phone domination is going to grow even larger in the next couple of years and social media will be right behind it. There is no better way (other than text messaging) to utilize the iPhone or Palm Pre than securing applications that can be used to strengthen a users social media experiences. I don’t think the concept of social media is going to die because of the power of being mobile. Customer service is going to be dependent on securing social media because of a users ability to automatically tweet or post an experience the moment it happens… that is powerful.

Experiences

Selling is now almost completely dependent on the experiences of the customers. Peer recommendations have always been a staple to sell your services… referral and word of mouth marketing are inherently connected to success. Social media has made experiential marketing and referral marketing extremely powerful because of the ease of sharing a message. Social media is strengthen by the experiences customers share online. It is extremely important for a business to understand the ability and the important of using social media to empower your customers to share your message.

There are other reasons to join, research, and implement social media but the future of tool is in the ability to leverage portability and customer experiences.

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Should a Not-for-Profit use Twitter?

The first step in utilizing a social tool like Twitteris to understand the human element in relation to social media. The human element can be referred to as an underlying form of authenticity when using social tools for communication. When consulting with a company, I tend to recommend two separate accounts. You should always have social media tools for your personal life, which could be separate from your business. There are (of course) different argument for both accounts.We can go into that at a later date.

When a person is seeking out information on your company they want two things concrete information (hard data, contact info, about us, etc) and the human element (owner, employee, company mission, etc). Twitter, not to mention every other social media outlet, gives you the opportunity to show a more human side to your business/organization.

Next step: Just try it out. Start an organization Twitter account (ie. Comcastcares). Search for people in your area and start following. See what happens.

Put some HUMAN into your COMPANY. Believe me, it is worth it.

After all, an empty, heartless logo is the last thing a donor will give money.

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Coming Back from the Dark

I am just now coming back from being unplugged for four days. I am still on vacation (until the 11th) but I couldn’t stand being away for more than a couple of days. It is hard to balance leaving a world that you use on a daily basis and be completed pulled away from it… for more than 2 hours. Many would say, “Kyle. You are absolutely crazy. Your life is rotting away because of the Internet.”

To that i say… actually… I wouldn’t say a thing. It is impossible to argue with individuals who insist on taking the Internet to the level of some type of brain rot. I don’t find an issue with having the inability to unplug for more than 4 days. There is something built into the nature of social media… a social aspect that keeps you from staying away for more than a 4 day period.

I gain thousands of ideas and insights from using social media. There is a reason for my use of this wonderful tool and it is knowledge. Knowledge from millions of people across the globe. Ayn Rand would be proud of my selfish nature while using social media.

I will be in touch soon. Time to go wake boarding

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