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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook – 3 Ways To Grow Your Business Online (stepbysteptips.com)
• One Blog or Many Blogs – Should the Network Begin (brucemarler.com)
• Romel Isidro Gutierrez Salazar : Nicaragua (kiva.org)
• Logo Design Budgets – Freelance Designer or Client to Decide? (imjustcreative.com)

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.

I Received My MBO Degree Yesterday

I attended the Masters of Business Online Conference yesterday in Indianapolis and I am happy to say that is was AWESOME. I really enjoyed hearing the presentations and getting to know plenty of influential people from the city of Indianapolis and abroad.

I had a great time at my session, Evolve or Die: The Future of Online Communication, and as promised (to the crowd) I am going to be placing the slidedeck on my blog to be viewed. The slides do not give the depth of the presentation but it gives you a sneek peek into what we were talking about…

If you want to check out what people were talking about in regards to the conference. Check out the Twitter feed: #mbo09 or click this link.

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Social media is worth making time for (socialmediatoday.com)
• Thought Leadership for Social Marketing Success (socialmediatoday.com)
• Sell by Educating Through Social Media (kylelacy.com)
• The hidden secrets of market research (entrepreneur.venturebeat.com)

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!