3 Comments Posted in My Life December 11, 2009

2 Guys Live in a Van to Raise Money

I had the pleasure of joining the Brandswag staff in hanging out with the guys over at the ForkOut.org Van to chat about CFI. CFI helps with mentoring students in high school academics and in life. I am on the board of CFI and I can tell you first hand that it is an awesome organization.

Redwall Live created the ForkOut experience and did an awesome job setting things up. We recorded a webisode with the guys. Make sure you check it out at ForkOut Website.

Thanks for having us out Daniel and Darren! Goodluck!… Read more

4 Comments Posted in Marketing, Public Relations, small business December 10, 2009

Don’t Sleep Around on Me. I Want a Relationship

Matt Rhodes over at Freshnetworks sparked my post today with a quote from the article: Love Your Customers. Use Social Media.

“A brand should be thinking of themselves as part of a consumer’s personal brand rather than the other way around…”

So many times we find ourselves spending money on external marketing, advertising, and branding. How do we get noticed? How do we get the average consumer to remember our brand name? It is all about ME. ME. ME. How do we get them to spend money? Acquisition. Acquisition.

While I think internal branding and design is important to success… social media has created a space where you can become part of the LIFE of a consumer. Talk about a good way to spark viral marketing! If you are molded … Read more

4 Comments Posted in Marketing, selling, small business, social media December 9, 2009

5 Ways to Change Attention to Action in Social Media

We spend oodles of  time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand while using social media. We spend countless hours reading about tips to gain attention and pull users into our content. Personally. I spend quite a bit on Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea.

Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning. This is the old marketing strategy of… the more content you share the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return … Read more

Leave a Comment Posted in social media, Social Strategy December 8, 2009

10 Ways to Maximize Plaxo

Plaxo? huh? I know at least two of the eyeballs reading this post thought… “Why is he writing about Plaxo?”

Frankly, I don’t hear or read much about Plaxo. Why not? It is still a viable tool to be used in terms of business networking. , I thought I would put a list together to help with the use and optimization of Plaxo. The following 10 tips are things I have learned by using Plaxo and what I have gained by reading along the way.

1. Upload a picture. This should already be common knowledge for the majority of you. We want to see a face. No more excuses. Scan a college or beauty picture is you have to!

2. Feed your blog into your profile. Go to Edit Profile–>Websites. … Read more

1 Comment Posted in My Life December 7, 2009

Giving a Gift to Fulfill the Greatest Wish

We all have that special organization that we absolutely cherish and give to through the holiday season. I have a couple which I enjoy: CFI and Make-A-Wish America. I wanted to send out a quick blog that announced a campaign that Make-A-Wish has started called The Greatest Wish. The entire concept of the campaign is to start collecting the top wishes of people all around the world. They would love to hear your greatest wish.

If you are Facebook you can visit the cause page at: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/410999

Search the #greatestwish Twitter hashtag: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=greatestwish

You can also add a Twibbon to your Twitter profile: http://twibbon.com/cause/The-Greatest-Wish-Campaign

Staci Shelton has also asked for people to donate to the cause instead of giving her a birthday present!

What is my greatest wish? I … Read more