Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon “TheNetworkKing” Alexander.
Brandon, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’ve been doing marketing since 2004–before I even knew it was called “marketing.” I started out in real estate investing. My mentor at the time taught me and a few others how to identify deals for about two weeks before he said: “get to work.” He told us our first step was to let people know that you buy houses for cash, period. He gave us the method of putting out flyers and conducting direct mail campaigns, but the terminology he used was in its simplest form. What he didn’t tell me–that I just started to do naturally–was send emails to everyone in my contact list on my yahoo account at that time. I also went through my phone and did text message marketing–only I was texting every person in my phone one contact at a time b/c back then there was no such thing as group texting or SMS marketing.
In 2005, I got introduced to Facebook. The moment I saw what it was I knew it was going to replace MySpace and be the powerhouse that it is now. I started to build my own personal brand and create my database on their platform. As Facebook grew, I grew with it, both quality and quantitywise. I got a little obsessed with the quantity part for awhile though. At one point, I had 6 different Facebook accounts for several different ventures with 2 of them maxed out at 5,000 friends. This wasn’t even including my groups. When I first got on Facebook, I created so many groups so quick that one of my friends created a group called “I wish Brandon Alexander would stop creating Facebook groups” LOL. Needless to say, FB is really what launched me digitally. Being born + raised in Atlanta, never leaving and being associated in so many different circles is how I made a name for myself around the city.
From 2004 – 2008, I pursued various entrepreneurial ventures from real estate to network marketing to fashion and more. It was toward the end of 2008 that someone showed me how to Google myself (before Googling yourself was a thing) and I saw all of my social media results that I had created just from branding myself for so long. I thought to myself “I know how I did this. I could do this for other people. Businesses and entrepreneurs are going to need this.” On January 1st, 2009, I coined myself as The Social NetworKING and I had the vision for becoming the brand strategist that I’m still striving to evolve into the everyday.
At first, I just tagged myself as a Social NetworKING – Digital Marketing Executive. Then it became The Social NetworKING – Digital Marketing & Online PR Executive. Later, I realized what I really was doing was brand development. By 2012, I started shooting video to add as a service for my clients. It was around that time that I started figuring out how to partner + outsource various jobs that may not be my specialty but still could be a representation of my overall services for my clients. Now, I have no problems telling people that I have a full-service creative agency that can service all of their branding needs.
Has it been a smooth road?
I don’t know ANY entrepreneur that has had a smooth road. Even the people I know who have inherited fully-functional, successful businesses from their parents still have their set of problems–they just deal with different types of problems than what many people like myself wouldn’t be used to…like not plateauing and elevating their business to a higher level than when they inherited the business.
My journey has had SO MANY ups and downs. I think doing the various ventures in my 20’s came from honestly not having enough mentors and not knowing how and when to choose a mentor. My parents only knew so much about entrepreneurship. With that said, I’ve had to figure out the majority of what I know now about entrepreneurship on my own.
I did have several mentors in my 20s when I think about it but the ones that I really should have stuck with were ones that I parted ways with too early. I didn’t even really look at them as mentors. The one main person I called my mentor in my 20s, though a genius when it came to his profession, had a bad reputation in the community unbeknownst to me. I was 23 when I started with him and he was 32 at the time. Needless to say, I was just following his lead most of the time until I started to feel confident enough to handle certain things on my own. What I didn’t know was my reputation was getting damaged just because I was associated with him. It was because of this that we never could get anyone to do any business deals with us. I didn’t start to figure this out til years later after I parted ways with him for stealing money from the clothing line we had together.
Fast forward, I’ve had to teach myself to start with depending on myself for everything FIRST before you move to hiring and partnering with people to do jobs for you. I’ve also had to deal with persevering past all of the “NO’s” that you get as a business owner. Maintaining confidence, work, and life balance, knowing your worth, setting and keeping yourself on a productive schedule, learning how to sell, keeping business + personal finances separate–all these things and more are a learning process as an entrepreneur. I’m STILL learning lessons on everything I just mentioned. I’m very blessed to be in the position to provide for myself without having to work for anyone else. I’ve kinda had no choice b/c Corporate America never seemed to realize that they need me–their loss! LOL!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Social NetworKING™ story. Tell us more about it.
I own a creative agency that specializes in commercial production for businesses. What that looks like depends on what stage you’re at in your business.
Our full-service agency helps brands ensure that they are telling their story efficiently by focusing on three areas: strategy, content creation, and execution. Whether you are in the infancy stages of creating your brand or your brand is in need of scaling and expansion, our agency can help you create your brand identity. We also can help you determine your brand’s positioning in the market.
Our agency is most known for our ability to create visually appealing content that engages your brand’s audience, which leads to an increase in conversions.
As a company, we’re most proud of the clients that:
1. Either hire us to walk them successfully through the full process of content strategy, creating the content as well as to distribute the content so that it’s most effective OR
2. Know how to use the deliverables that we create for the client + execute them as we instructed.
Having these two kinds of clients are always a win-win for both the client as well as our agency b/c in those situations the client gets results + an increase in revenue… and so do we!
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think the industry is already oversaturated with creative agencies. Everybody thinks they can do this business but it is definitely tough. Just getting the type of clients that will allow you to take them from start to finish on a project is challenging enough. I think in the next 5 – 10 years, you’ll see way more collaboration between agencies rather than competition. It’s much easier to get the W by joining forces than it is to pick a side.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://linktr.ee/TheNetworkKing
- Phone: 770.317.4186
- Email: TheNetworkKing@me.com
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