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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Authenticity, Transparency, and the Top 50 Blog Contest

It has been an interesting couple of days over at the Brandswag office because of a blog contest we started running on Tuesday. The Top 50 Indiana Blogs contest was started for the sole purpose of sharing the content of Indiana to the masses. Lorraine Ball and I had created a list of 50 blogs we enjoyed reading and this contest was created to support that original list.

The main goal of the contest was to showcase Indiana blogs and allow for some competitive voting on the side. Unfortunately the contest was hacked and screwed up by individuals who either wanted to win the contest or just wanted to create havoc for others involved. It is unfortunate that certain people had to resort to cheating on the contest and because of that fault… we worked through the weekend to fix the problem.

It is important to be authentic and transparent when communicating in the online world… hence… the reason for this blog post. We were under the opinion that it would be fun to launch a blog contest that would showcase the top content in Indiana. We were under the opinion that people would have integrity and only vote once for blogs they enjoyed. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

We did not develop a full scale voting platform (with necessary security features) because we did not want to spend the development money on a fun project… and we did not debate around every negative occurrence that could… happen.

We have received threatening emails and I have ACTUALLY received threatening voice-mails.

It has been suggested that I play the voice-mails on this blog and give bonus points to the individual that figures out the source… but I prefer to act mature every now and again.

The contest has been a success in terms of collecting the many pieces of blog content spread over the state. We received hundreds of nominations for blogs (many I had never heard of) and had awesome responses to many of them! I loved it and I am still loving it.

The contest will be finished and we will have some great content to read in regards to Indiana writers.Check out the contest if you haven’t already! It is awesome!

To those of you who would rather destroy things instead of build them… what goes around comes around… don’t screw with Indiana bloggers.

10 Ways to Stand Out from the Crowd and Win

In today’s turbulent economy it is extremely important for every business (both large and small) to stand out from the crowd. Brand awareness is huge in the competitive world. It is no longer good enough to deliver a superior product or customer service experience…. you need to be known as well.

How do you use the tools on the Internet (mainly social media) to increase your brand awareness and drive the competition into oblivion? And by oblivion I mean… the junkyard of dead businesses.

1. Start a Blog

In my opinion, starting a blog is the center point to all marketing activity online. If you are going to be spending time in social media it is extremely important that you have a central location for all of your content. People want to connect with you on a completely different level once you have started the communication process. Use WordPress to start a blog. When writing content it is important to schedule blog posts ahead in order to be completely successful at managing your time.

2. Develop An Outstanding Identity

Branding is huge when standing out from your competition. If your logo and brand identity have a unique twist from a quality design firm… you will be able to reap the rewards.

3. Use a Flip Cam to Record Customer Testimonials

Flip cam is a unique video camera that allows you to record up to 60 minutes of high-quality HD footage. The Flip cams are small enough they can be taken anywhere… anytime. You never know when you might have the chance to record a customer or an employee talking about your company. Upload the videos to YouTube and play them on your website.

4. Start a Referral Program with your Current and Past Customers

5. Tell stories about your daily routine

Many customers (both potential and current) want to learn about your company from the actual individuals running and working behind the brand. Tell stories about the daily encounters inside the firm. Did you have a trip to a local amusement park? Did an employee win a race or a exhibition league championship? Business is personal again.. now is the time to shift the way you communicate with the world.

6. Create a Facebook FanPage to Showcase Your Ideas to Your Fans

Facebook FanPages are amazing tools withing Facebook that will add onto the human capital value of your company. Ben McConnell from the Church of the Customer gives an excellent idea surrounding Facebook FanPage marketing:

When fans interact with a fan page on Facebook, that interaction is sent through the fan’s news feed, which goes to all their friends, practically daring a chunk of them to see what the page is about.

7. Use Email Marketing to Stay in Front of Prospects

Email Marketing is not dead and it will give you an edge over the competition if done right. I will leave this up to the professionals over at Delivera: If You are Going to Win. You Have to Play the Game!

8. Sponsor a Tweetup or Social Media Meetup

I know.. I know.. Tweetup sounds like a complete GEEK fest! If can be a huge source of potential clients depending on your demographic. There are many small business and c-level employees who have started to attend Tweetups. I have yet to see a local Tweetup sponsored by a company. If you are wondering how many Twitter users are in your general area try Twellowhood.

9. Fully Utilize LinkedIN Recommendations

In my opinion there is nothing more powerful than a LinkedIN recommendation. Why is that? You can only get so real (other than video) in the world of the Internet. A LinkedIN recommendation gives your happy customers the ability to give you the KUDOS your company deserves.

10. Encourage Your Sales Team to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

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!

Sell by Educating Through Social Media

Seth Godin had a great blog post yesterday talking about the fear of apples and the top two reasons people are not buying your product:

1. They don’t know about it.

2. They’re afraid of it.

Haven’t we been dealing with fear quite a bit this year? If you are a sales person (which most small business owners are) you may have seen the effects of this fear on your bottom line. The down economy has been killing the “risk-taking” gene of many professionals from corporate level employee to small business owner. The “risk-taking” gene is that diamond in the rough that allows for business to exist… to flourish. It reminds me on the William Shedd quote: A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

Are your clients clamming up? Are potential customers not buying because they do not know about your product or service…. or they are just… afraid?

Companies that use social media for lead generation and product information have a huge advantage over the companies that do not use the tools. Social media gives you the ability to inform your potential clients on products with stories! What better way to inform?

Be honest with me… would you rather read a story or boring product/service information?

I would rather read a story… every… single… time.

What stories are you telling your clients?What about your potential clients? Do you have a blog where you are writing your business stories? The marketing for your business should read like a book… a book of stories… a book where your potential leads learn about your company.

When the time comes to buy on a product or service… who do you think they are going to call? You or the business who doesn’t care about educating through stories?

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Where is Your Customer Conversation?

Amy Lemen is the President of ALL In One Marketing, a strategic brand and marketing consulting business in Indianapolis. She specializes in helping companies leverage customer insights to build better brands, develop new products, and create marketing strategies.

If your brand were a celebrity, who would it be and why?
This is a question typically used to define a brand’s character, which is a critical component of the overall identity of a brand.

Up until recently, many brands were able to grow without having a well defined and compelling brand character. As long as a brand provided a consistent set of meaningful, differentiated benefits to a target group of customers, it had a chance of being successful. This was because the brand could control its messaging, as it consistently talked to its target customer.

The communication framework between brands and customers is now very different. A brand now must engage in a conversation with its customers. A conversation means that a brand can’t just keep stating its key messages. It has to respond to what customers are saying and asking, and sometimes the key messages just aren’t appropriate responses.So in these cases, what is a brand supposed to say? This is where the brand’s character plays a critical role.

The brand’s character enables the brand to talk with its customers without the key messages while still staying true to what it stands for. The character is truly the brand’s personality, defining its temperament, attitude and behaviors. It is now the critical component that supports conversations between a brand and its customers. Without it, who are the customers really conversing with?

Can you identify the celebrity that personifies your brand? If this doesn’t come easily to you, perhaps you should take some time to more fully develop your brand’s character. It will make the conversations between your brand and your customers far richer and more meaningful.

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Diamond Marketing and Selling the Experience

This morning I was listening to a local radio station when a diamond store’s advertisement played across the speakers… I sat there at the stoplight listening to the words…

“We are the ONLY diamond store that buys direct from the manufacturer… cutting out middleman pricing… best quality diamonds… friendly service…”

Truthfully… the ad was lame. There was no story telling… there was no emotional buy. There was nothing that invited me to continue the conversation. I decided to look into the other diamond sellers and manufacturers in the city. You guessed it… they were all the same. They all said the exact same thing.

Frankly, I do not care that you had to fly to Hong Kong to buy your diamonds. I don’t care that you are cutting out the middleman pricing. I care that you treat me the right way when I walk in the door. I care about the experience of the purchase not the purchase itself.

When we are selling a professional product or service it is important to DIFFERENTIATE. It is a lost art. How do you differentiate in a world where everything is starting to sound similar… sound bland?   It is essential that you gain the trust of the individual before they buy. It is essential to encourage your customers to tell the story.

You can buy as many radio, yellow pages, or newspaper ads as your budget allows… it only breaks the surface. The experience sells the product. How are you using your website, social media, traditional marketing, and networking to tell your story.

Do not bore the world with details… tell them the story!

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Social Media Selling to the New CEO

It is going to happen.

The Baby Boomer generation is going to slowly trickle out of the top spots in companies all over the world and Generation X is going to take thier place. How are you positioning your company to sell to the next CEO?

There are individuals who have different ideas on how to market directly to leaders of companies. There are direct mail campaigns, email marketing, event marketing, and offline networking. However, the world is slowly changing.. let me rephrase that.. the world is fast approaching a digital community of business owners and entreprenuers who are creating content and communicating on a level that was never possible… until now.

LinkedIN is posting 5% growth in July. Facebook is growing at an exponential rate among men 26-34. Even Plaxo and Twitter are making strides into the world of B2B selling. Are you supporting your company to market to the next generation of CEOs?

The next generation of CEOs are going to connect on an entirely different level than their predecessors. Email and newsletters are going to be a thing of the past and the new social economy will welcome them with open arms.

We have a global community of people presenting ideas and content on a daily basis to help run businesses at a smoother, more profitable rate. Why are you not involved in this process? Is valuable content such a scary proposition?

Share your ideas on a blog. Start a LinkedIN group for young professionals. Invest in the 25-38 year old demographic (both male/female) and watch the leads start to generate as they take positions of power in the company.

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Search & Authenticity Are Key to Corporate Blogging

I was skimming through Chris Brogan’s posts and happened across a post called: A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze. This caught my attention because I am a huge advocate for branding, both personal and professional.

I have tried to use my blog to create a brand identity for myself and my company and it has been successful in more ways than one. In his post Chris talks about the concept of search being involved in the corporate strategy of most companies:

One of the reasons that I advocate content marketing, such as writing a compelling group blog, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity. Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product.

Content marketing should be in the corporate strategy plans of every business in America. There are a couple of reasons why I am strongly urge clients and businesses to dive into the realm of content marketing:

1. The Search

By blogging and writing about things that “people may search for,” you are creating a website (blog) that will hit the search engines with enthusiasm. When you have a site where content is changing regularly and you are writing about issues/services that people find important, you will find an increase in visitors to your site. And with an increase in visitors comes… more lead generation for your company and service offering.

2. Authenticity and Personality

Consumers today want communication authenticity and personality behind a company. If you are a stoned face corporation sitting in a corporate park somewhere and are NOT listening to your customers needs and wants: YOU WILL FAIL. By blogging and creating an area for dialouge you are telling your customers: I trust you. I want to hear what you have to say. This goes for both big business and small business.

3. Brand Identity and Value

People want to connect with brands on a level that has become as personal as a relationships between two people. A blog/content marketing allows you to start the romantic courtship of a consumer. This courtship can turn into a seasoned consumer that will spread your good message across the valleys and streams. Maybe even through their email.

There are a multitude of reasons to start a blog and create a space where content marketing is king. Read more of Chris Brogan’s posts if you get the chance. He is a genius at laying out what it takes to create great, authentic content.

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