Cover Story

February 2012 Issue --> Cover Story Article

Social Media & Brand Strategy from a Pop Culture Connoisseur

By: Tammy Lawman and Kinsey Schofield

Kinsey Schofield is nationally recognized writer, social media strategist and TV personality. She has over 50,000 followers on Twitter.

Kinsey was recently recognized as the number 25 in the 100 Greatest Women in Social Media and she was chosen as a cast member of E!'s Party Monsters: Cabo where she won over international superstar P. Diddy.

Tammy Lawman: So you've been on E! News, MTV, Fox News Live, The Gossip Queens, Fox and Friends and a ton of other media outlets and you're only 26 years old. Is that correct?

Kinsey Schofield:Yes, well I was on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine when I was 24 and then when I was 25 I landed in Fast Company Magazine. They did a social media influencer project and I was on that when I was 25. I should probably take those ages off of my bio though because it's not Hollywood it's not good to say that you're over the age of 22.

Tammy Lawman: You talk about how impatient you were for success and how you didn't see yourself going through four years of college. A lot of people who are in our audience work a full-time job and maybe they're not happy doing what they're doing right now and they want to do something else but is it possible to have a typical, 9-to-5 job while trying to pursue your passion?

Kinsey Schofield: Yes, because you can build your brand online in small doses. The older generation used the word "viral" and they think these personalities and videos just take off over night. Keep in mind we had to put up with Ashton Kutcher in Dude Where's My Car well before people discovered him online and we decided we liked this personality and this person that we now tolerate with glee.

I think you absolutely can pursue your passions after work, like during your lunch break. A tweet is 140 characters or less. That's something you can easily do on the sly on your iPhone underneath the desk. It's all about, really, determining where you're trying to go and you can absolutely pursue it while you have to deal with a typical job.

Tammy Lawman: Great! For people who are in the situation where they know they want to be their own boss or their own entrepreneur and they want to build a brand for themselves, where should they get started in determining what area to focus on if they just don't really know?

Kinsey Schofield: I think it's about what you're passionate about. What can you talk for hours about? What gets your attention? What can get you the monetary reward? Maybe it's something that you've unintentionally discovered that you're kind of ahead of the curve on. I loved Myspace and that's actually where I got my start. My mom was like, "Why do you have 30,000 Myspace friends? Why do 30,000 people care about you?"

I was like, "Because I can take a really good picture in the bathroom and people think I'm adorable." My mom just couldn't understand what the obsession was with the Myspace thing. I think if you accidentally stumble upon something where you are just ahead of the curve, it's a sign and you should pursue that. Or look at what you can talk about for hours and you thoroughly love.

If it's something that you think you can start to make some money off of, pursue your passion at all costs because I do think that you can be successful if it's something that your heart is definitely devoted to.

Tammy Lawman: Can you talk a little bit about why it's important and how people can solidify their goals? You said earlier that you knew what you wanted earlier on.

Kinsey Schofield: Right. I've worked with a lot of companies that just have no end game, no goals, which makes my job very difficult. You need to make a list of goals and things you want to accomplish. I would get excuses like, "Well, we're a start-up," and everybody would kind of like chuckle and look at each other like they're so cool. Well, it's the reason why your start-up isn't on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine.

If you're going in 30 different directions, it's difficult to actually accomplish anything, let alone a bigger goal. You need to make small goals and you need to have a really, really big goal otherwise you are going to get lost and shuffled along in the chaos and in the fray of a new business or a small business. You just definitely need to sit down and put things to paper.

I know it's cheesy but everybody that I shake hands with out here when they talk about their practices in Los Angeles and how they got from point A to point B they all mention aspects of the secret, whether it's just being grateful and writing down lists and why they're grateful and making those lists of future goals and what they want to accomplish. Little things like, "I just need to get paid on time," put that on paper.

I know a lot of small businesses don't get paid all the time because I know I don't. If you put that stuff on paper, you really have a better idea of what you're trying to accomplish. Maybe you'll that invoice out a little earlier or maybe you get paid double because the client's feeling generous. Know what you want and know what you're trying to accomplish otherwise you're alone in a dark room.

Tammy Lawman: Wonderful. Now what are some of the key profiles to develop online in order to create your brand or presence?

Kinsey Schofield: You're obviously going to need to develop an official website for yourself where you're in control of your image and the content. Facebook is a crucial tool as well as Twitter. Depending on your industry, LinkedIn can be very helpful as well. It's just a really cool opportunity. First of all, these sites have, aside from your official, great SEO.

If somebody puts your name or your company to a Google search, you're guaranteed to be one of the first searches that come up. Second of all, you're going to be controlling this content so you can make yourself look as awesome as you want to at the beginning before you have other people voluntarily talking about you. I think that it's really important that you set up those social profiles.

Also, we all love social media. We love Twitter. We're always peeking over at our Facebook accounts. Facebook is really such a cool personal hub where you can non-invasively get in front of somebody in their mind and that you exist. It's definitely key to set up those social profiles.

Tumblr also is a blogging site that I love and its SEO is killer so they're another great site to have if you like to blog just to drop some blogs on that site, even if it's just for SEO purposes. Keep in mind that these are just natural ways for people to stumble upon you. If your content is good enough, people are going to find you.

Tammy Lawman: Fabulous. Kinsey, when you talk about developing an online presence, is it important to get input from other people as to what you want to create? I know for me I have struggled with it for years on what I want to put out there and what I want it to look like. I'm just so self-depreciating that I can't even seem to think about what are the things I can offer, what are the things I'm good at. Where would someone start with that?

This article is just a small portion of an hour-long interview, and is only one of several interviews conducted for Internet Marketing TNT. If you'd like to see the full call, as well as other interviews in this series, simply visit Internet Marketing - Very Important Profit Systems.

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