The new Keller Williams websites – Everything you need to know

Posted on May 17, 2016August 29, 2016 by Ken Granger

Your New Keller Williams Website

Late last year Keller Williams announced the transition to the next generation of Keller Williams websites powered by Placester. As part of the KW technology package, every KW agent will be getting one of these new websites, before the current eAgentC websites are phased out at the end of 2016. The new KW websites are built around showcasing agent’s own listings and providing an easy way for visitors to search the MLS, all while being completely responsive.

The design of the new Keller Williams website has come a long way since the release of eAgentC. The new websites powered by Placester look great on every device, feature a built-in IDX, and improve lead capture. This means the new sites adjust to every screen size from phones, to desktops, and everything in between. Out of the box, the new sites also include options to add social media links that are prominently featured. Each site will have the standard KW branding, but can be customized to add an agent’s branding. Approved vendors (such as BrandCo) work directly with the site’s core to even further customize the sites, allowing for a fully branded look and feel. Take a look at the FAQ below to learn even more about the new KW websites.

What technology powers the new KW websites?

The new KW sites are built by Placester. The Placester platform will replace the eAgentC websites, while still connecting to eEdge. Leads can alternatively be forwarded by email if you choose to use another CRM.

What will happen to my current KW website?

If you have an eAgentC website provided by KW, it will be phased out and replaced by your new KW website powered by Placester. If you have a responsive design completed by BrandCo we can help migrate your brand to the new platform. Reach out to one of our account managers to talk about the transition.

How can I customize my new KW site?

The new KW sites come with some basic customization options in the administration area. For a truly branded website, we can help. Take a look at our Placester Responsive Refresh options.

When will I get my new KW site?

KW is rolling out the new sites in multiple phases starting April 11th, 2016 through June 2016. The rollout schedule is being continually updated and can be found here: Rollout Schedule

I have a custom domain, what happens now?

You can point your custom domain name to your new KW website by editing a few things in your domains DNS. Our team can help you with this if you get stuck.

How do I access my new KW site?

You can log into your myKW account to access your new site. Go to “Technology”, then click “New KW Website – Agent”.

Who is the IDX provider with the new websites?

The new IDX provider is Placester and will replace your previous IDX provider. Unless you would like more flexibility with your IDX, BrandCo can provide additional options via the PiggyBack Blogs platform.

Does Placester cover my MLS?

Placester covers about 95% of MLSs throughout the US and Canada.

If I have multiple MLS’s, can I have multiple IDX searches?

Currently, your new KW site will only have one IDX integration. KW plans to include the ability for multiple integrations for a site in the future.

Is there a cost for the new KW sites or any other fees?

There is no cost for the new KW sites, as they are included in you monthly KS technology fee. You can upgrade the basic Placester site to the Placester Pro Site for an additional cost. The features included in Pro Site can make a big difference in your lead capture.

What about the stuff I have on my current KW website?

If you added original photos, text, or blog posts to your current website, you will want to add them to your new Placester site. Unfortunately there is no way to automatically send everything over at this time. BrandCo has several packages to help you transition if you do not want to do this yourself.

Where can I get support for my new site?

Placester provides phone support: 800-713-8068
Support via email: kw-support@placester.com
24/7 support via the self-help center

We are continually updating this post to reflect changes, additions, or any other insights on the new sites.

Building a website your visitors will love

Posted on May 12, 2016July 7, 2016 by Ken Granger

Building a site that your visitors will love can be a lot easier when you keep in mind a few important principals. A great site incorporates professional design, has purposeful content, and is easy to navigate. Together these principals lead to higher conversion rates and more leads.

Great design means better conversion

Time and time again agents have reported seeing an increase in business after redesigning their website. This makes sense, as great design supports a better user experience. If a website visitor can easily find what they are looking for, they are more likely to reach out to you and view you as an expert. As a real estate agent, you want visitors to be able to search for listings easily and without much effort. Mark Slade, a BrandCo client and KW agent, recently stated in New Jersey REALTOR® Magazine, “…I was hearing from consumers that they didn’t want to go through the motions of using the IDX setup to drill down and answer a lot of questions”. That is why Mark added buttons for each town in his geographical area right on his homepage. This simple design element allows users to quickly navigate to a town without digging around.

Making it easy to find the right information

The minute a visitor lands on your site, you are up against the clock. According to research, visitors will leave your site in as little as 10 seconds if they don’t see a clear purpose and the value a page provides. This is why it is imperative to create pages that have a defined purpose. Create pages that center around one topic or one line of logic. For example, you could create a page focused on schools in a specific area. With a single focus, search engines can more easily index the page for a specific keyword and visitors can hone in on pages that interest them.

Make it easy to navigate

A site that is easy to navigate means more than a simple menu structure. You want to guide visitors through your site, with links to important pages on the homepage. Don’t clutter the nav bar, consider adding a resource page with links to articles, vendors, or other resources. Repeating your navigation in the footer is also a good idea, it allows visitors to move on to another area of your website without having to scroll back up to the top. With more than half of all web traffic being generated from mobile devices, easy navigation means thinking about navigation on all devices. A responsive website design allows for a site to be scaled with ease, with finger-friendly navigation for phones and tablets.

A reputable web design company will help you achieve these principals and allow you to extract the most value from your site. As the web grows and quickly becomes the starting point for real estate related searches, your website matters more than ever. With a great site, you not only have a strong presence on the web, you have a valuable resource your visitors will love.

Serving Clients Efficiently with Calendly

Posted on February 15, 2016February 8, 2016 by Ken Granger

How many times have you been interrupted by the ring of your telephone? I can imagine that we all can say far more times than we care to admit.

The ability to focus is often shattered by distractions such as phone calls, texts, or other things that have no control over. Luckily for those of us at BrandCo who regularly end up in long phone conversations have found an awesome solution.

Calendly is a free web-based product for scheduling appointments. There are upgrades that you can receive if you wish to go with their Premium account, but the free account works for most of our needs. You’re able to put the power of scheduling with you into the hands of your clients and contacts. Many of the features that they make available really make a difference to our business day.

Google Calendar Sync

Calendly comes with the ability to pair up with your Google calendars. This allows you to block yourself off on specific times of the day. It also removes the possibility of every getting double booked for a call or an appointment.

I have all of my call appointments automatically added to a singular calendar due to wanting them to be a different color by default. However, when Calendly looks to see if I am available to schedule an appointment, it looks at multiple calendars that I have assigned to it.

Appointment openings

Along with blocking out your specific calendars to accommodate appointments being schedule, you’re able to do even more within your meeting settings! Most importantly, you’re able to have certain windows open for people to schedule within. Aside from that, you are able to limit the number of appointments that can be scheduled in a single day. Not to mention, for every appointment, you can give yourself an additional buffer time before and after, just in case things run behind (as you know, is totally possible!).

Cancellations

Clients have the ability to cancel their appointments with you with a click of a button, automatically notifying you and making the appointment time available for others again. It also works the other direction, let’s say you find yourself unable to come to work due to sickness and have appointments already scheduled, you can give them a much easier heads-up that you won’t be able to attend.

Reminders

Reminders are sent to you clients regarding your appointment with them so that they are less likely to forget. This is probably one of my favorite features.

Down to Business

You’re able to set specific questions so that you’re more prepared for your meetings. For my own personal Calendly, I make sure to ask what the call will be about and what their preferred contact number is. This enables me to get into the right frame of mind prior to contacting the client…making the experience better for both of us.

No More Phone Tag

How much time do you think you’ve wasted by emailing back and forth to set appointments or, better yet, trying to return voicemails just to end up leaving one in return? This is probably the best part of Calendly. Being able to send someone a link so that they can schedule with you around your schedule is a huge benefit in our every day work process.

Upgrade for More Options

Upgrading to their premium option allows for a number of additional features. One of which is the option for separate appointment types rather than the singular option with the free version. When you sign up for your account, you’re given a trial of premium, to give you a taste. Your two default appointments types are 15 minutes and 30 minute long appointments. For more information, I’d definitely suggest reaching out to them directly.

I love Calendly, it’s made it easier to connect with our clients and removes the main focus of frustration. Id you schedule appointments, give it a try!

Yoast SEO social vs. JetPack Publicize

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Ken Granger

The question has been posed as to what the benefits and drawbacks would be when putting Yoast SEO’s Social up against Jetpack’s Publicize feature. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain each and what they do. Both features within their respective WordPress plugins are very important when doing social media marketing of your blog’s content. So, let’s explore what they can do for us.

Yoast SEO

This plugin is a huge asset when it comes to properly setting up your posts, pages, and entire website to better increase your search engine optimization. It incorporates everything from a snippet editor and real time page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.

Yoast SEO’s social area

The social area within the Yoast SEO plugin can easily be enabled by connected your social networks in place under the plugin’s social settings area. This will open up the ability to customize how links to your posts and pages display within Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. You’re able to control everything from the Title shown to the photo that pops up when shared. This plugin is important to utilize because social enthusiasts regularly decide to click on the “good-looking” shares that end up in their feed.

We all know that with some of our blog posts, random photos have the opportunity to be displayed depending on where they’re located on the website when we are sharing them. This helps put the power into your control so you can make the decisions in how your site is marketed.

Jetpack

Jetpack is an incredibly robust plugin that connects a self-hosted WordPress website to the features enjoyed on WordPress.com. These features include everything from tiled mosaic photo galleries to a Facebook feed for your blog’s sidebar. Most importantly to this article is the Publicize feature that becomes available to you.

Jetpack’s Publicize feature

Publicize makes it easy to share your site’s posts on several social media networks automatically when you publish a new post.

Automating your social sharing upon the Publish of a blog post takes the guess work of whether or not people know that you’ve added new content. It’s important to let your fan/followers know when you’re creating new posts because that content is usually for them anyways. So, why not give them a heads up?

With the Publicize feature, you’re able to customize which of the 6 following social networks your information gets shared out to automatically: Facebook (Profile or Page), Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, Path, and Google+. This makes it easy to market your content right away to your target demographic, giving them the chance to also share your information to their friends and followers, too.

So, Which do you use?

So, essentially, it isn’t quite fair to put these two plugins’ features up against each other. To get the best out of your social media marketing, they are best when used in conjunction with each other.

Utilize Yoast SEO’s social area to manage how your information is displayed when shared through social media networks while allowing Jetpack’s Publicize feature to automatically distribute when you Publish and you’ll be set!

Employee Spotlight – Marc

Posted on January 27, 2016January 29, 2016 by Ken Granger

Since Marc’s addition to the BrandCo team, he has become a huge asset in our Refresh department. One day destined to join Stark Industries, he regularly improves our processes and build times. Learn more about him below.

What do you do here?
I am a web developer on the Refresh team. I build, launch, and support all things Responsive Refresh.

What got you into developing / design?
I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering so I have a good background in code and critical thinking/problem solving. I also have a background in art which helped give me a good eye for design. Web development just seemed right to me.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…
easy-going, friendly, helpful

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:
I’m always finding great art/music/tech on Reddit.

Best thing about BrandCo:
I love working in small teams where your contributions really make a difference.

If you had a super power…
Teleportation, anything to get me off of the 528.

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?
Nobody made me laugh harder than Bugs Bunny

Any special awards / milestones / fun facts about you?
I’m a classically trained musician. I played trombone for about 8 years and still like to write music on my free time.

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)
I am a major foodie. I love cooking fancy or exotic foods. I am always trying hole in the wall restaurants or places I find in food blogs.

The one thing you’d like to share about yourself that maybe people don’t know:
I collect hot sauce…

How often should I blog?

Posted on January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 by Ken Granger

One of the most common questions raised when beginning a blog is, “how often should I blog or publish new posts? ” In a less complex world, publishing new content several times a day would seem ideal, but rarely do businesses have enough resources to devote to such an endeavor nor do most have a captive enough audience they can entertain with such a content onslaught.

So, it is important to know what you can allocate in order to be successful by creating content for your blog. Not only that, be sure that you have researched what your audience’s reading habits and interests are, in ensure that you’re making the most with the time that you do devote. Below are the 4 ways to be sure that you’re creating content as often as you must in order to be successful in your blogging venture.

Be Consistent

Consistency has to be the most important part of blogging. Whether you intend on creating new content every day, week, or month, it is important to continue to be consistent with it. If your plan is to post once a month, post on the same day every month. Believe it or not, Google begins to take presidency to ensure that it crawls your website for new content on that day because it will begin to see a pattern. Amazing, isn’t it? If Google or other search engines are able to discover your posting schedule, your posts are likely to appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) much more quickly. Of course, this depends on the quality of your content, low-quality content will never help you rank higher – regardless of frequency.

Be Realistic

Whether you are writing all of your content yourself, hiring an intern, or utilizing a third party company, you need to know what you will be capable of rolling out when it comes to creating new content. When creating the content within your own business, it is always a good idea to write the first couple of posts that you have added to your editorial calendar, time how long each one takes to complete, and average it all together to get an idea of how long future blog posts will take. This makes it possible to be realistic about the amount of time you need to dedicate to creating new content for your blog.

Get as many people within your company involved in writing blog posts. Allowing for different voices and talents to be displayed on your blog makes it more possible to roll out more content on a consistent basis. Everything is better when you have help, right?

Lastly, if you are taking advantage of a third party company to write your content for you, understand the budget that you have to allocate to the task. Essentially, be realistic in what you’re willing to pay and the results that you wish to see from your money spent.

Check out the Competition

Some of the best research to discover your ideal posting frequency will be to take a look at what your competition has working for them. If their blog has been around for a while, it is very likely that they have figured out what works best when delivering content within your industry. If you find that they are posting every week on Monday and you currently do not have the resources to do the same in the beginning, make goals to get there. Start with every other week and build up to being able to post every week.

Be sure, however, to not attempt replicating a company outside of your industry, it is smart to learn from those that are doing what you do already, but doing it best.

Test, Test, Test

In the world of inbound/content marketing, you learn that you must constantly test yourself when you’re getting started to see what works best. Maybe you overestimated your audience’s interest in new daily content? You have to give it a try, at times, to figure that our for yourself. Try publishing on different days and at different times and see what difference it makes. Eventually, you will find the perfect rhythm to satisfy your company and your audience.

When asking, “How often should I blog?”

When you’re just getting started with a blog, even the most basic tasks can seem daunting – especially if you’re blogging for the first time. When it comes to frequency, however, don’t spend too much time fretting over getting it perfect. Find a schedule that works for you and your audience, and go for it. The worst thing you can do is publish inconsistently, so just make sure you choose a frequency you can keep up with. The more frequently you publish, the greater the chances of improving your SEO, so try to publish as often as possible – without sounding like a broken record.

10 Best Real Estate Websites of 2015

Posted on January 18, 2016January 26, 2016 by Ken Granger

Responsive web design was the name of the game in 2015 and real estate websites were no different. Making sure that your site is viewable in multiple platforms such as cell phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop is crucial due to the changes to search engine algorithms, like that of Google, that took place this year. The below websites prominently display the ability for visitors to do property searches, as well as multiple calls to action that coin side with each business’ goals. Take a look at the 10 best websites of 2015 for Keller Williams agents created by BrandCo.

Kerr & Associates

Betty Kerr and her team of associates host an amazing new responsive website that’s viewable on all different platforms. If you are searching for a home in the Orange County area of California, you are instantly presented with options to make your search much easier. The layout is simplistic, but quick to give information that its visitors may be looking for. Whether you’re looking to buy or to sell, there is something for you!The colors used throughout the design represent warm tones and a sophisticated pallet.

Joe Pineda

Scenic is the perfect word to describe Joe Pineda’s new website. Joe is a Hawaii-focused real estate agent and his site greatly illustrates the beautiful views that he can grant for his potential clients. Within the homepage, you can see the most important call-to-action, which would be searching for homes. After which, you’re greeted by the opportunity to learn more about Honolulu and for home owners to learn the value of their previous purchases. The colors used throughout the website are bright and eye catching imagery is used.

Rita Orear

A very fun and spunky real estate website with a nicely placed home search above the fold at the main call to action. This site has everything laid out beautifully for its clients. The menu is longer than most of those within this list, but contains a large amount of information. Community and school information is available, as well as information and pre-made searches for popular local communities located in the Indianapolis area. This website is built fully on the WordPress platform, making it easy for the client to maintain and add information.

Michelle Alton

Michelle Alton is a real estate agent that focuses on finding homes for her clients that suit their lifestyles. Her website allows people to do their home searches regarding city, suburban, or cottage life. You are able to easily sign up for listing alerts, as well. Unlike most other websites, many links are available straight from the homepage regarding buyer and seller resources, as well as investment opportunities. With the use of cool, tranquil colors, this design really comes to life.

Imagine Utah Living

Imagine Utah Living, the website of Wendy Anderson is one that is completely moving. All of the elements of the area in which this real estate agent serves is clearly represented, everything from mountains to lakes to woods. I am especially fond of the lower calls to action housed within circles. These elements stack very nicely when being viewed through mobile devices, which is important when it comes to Google search engines and the change that occurred to their algorithm in 2015.

Darrell Gargala

Darrell Gargala is a former real estate investor gone real estate agent. His website is meant to help guide others entering the real estate world. Located in Colorado, Darrell focuses on first time homebuyers, investors, and military. Calls to action include buyer resources, your home’s value, blog, and the ability to download his home-search app. As with all good real estate websites, this one also spotlights communities to increase ease of search for visitors.

Allison Ziefert’s Best NJ Towns

Hyper local is a great way to describe the website created for Allison Ziefert. This New Jersey native knows that her clients are looking to buy within the communities of South Orange and Maplewood and has positioned herself to become an expert those areas. Allison’s website makes it easy for views to search for new homes and provides great information on surrounding communities. Not to mention, she regularly posts within her blog, adding to her Search Engine Optimization.

Brittany Purcell and Associates

One of the best things regarding the new website for Brittany Purcell and Associates is how the layout speaks to the reader. People visiting this website are often looking for homes in the Athens and Gainesville areas of Georgia. Calls to action help those visitors to easily find different kinds of property listings within those two hyper-local areas. To go into even more details within those areas, you can visit the Neighborhoods tab in the website navigations for subdivision and community information. Brittanysells.com is designed to be a very welcoming, southern, soft website and it surely delivers.

Kelli Bairn

Quick, to-the-point, and highly stylized – a great way to describe Kelli Barin’s new website from 2015. This Colorado native real estate agent now has a very earthy and nature toned design that demonstrates many of the great things in her area. Calls to action on Kelli’s homepage include calculating home worth, relocation assistance, and a link to their blog with information for buyers, sellers, and the area.

River City Living

Ryan Vandaele is an Illinois and Iowa licensed agent who focuses on the river cities. So, what better website than River City Living? This site gives visitors the opportunity to search for properties in many different ways. They have access to the standard property search, open houses, to download the mobile app, and other links to properties sold by owners and many others. Other great bounties of information are found throughout the homepage to take you further into the website, as well as a blog for them to regularly update their site.

6 Ways to Repurpose your Content : Content is Forever

Posted on January 11, 2016January 25, 2016 by Ken Granger

Content forever has a place on the internet. Once you’ve published a blog post or page, the possibility of search engines recommending it never ends.

However, sometimes it can be difficult to find new topics to write about because it feels like you’ve already “done it all.” Well, thankfully, you’re not alone in this. Others have made habits of repurposing their content and have seen great results.

Syndication

Syndication is taking content that you’ve already published on your own site and giving other parties permission to repost it on their sites. Third parties can repost some or all of the syndicated content, but it is typically an exact copy.

Unlike duplicate content, however, syndicated posts always link back to where the article was originally published to give credit. Usually, the places you might choose to syndicate to have as large, or many times larger, the size audience you have on your own website.

Some websites noteworthy in assisting with this endeavor are: Medium, Social Media Today, and Business 2 Community.

Stretch out what you already have

Have some very successful blog posts or ones that you feel passionate about? Well, that content is worth building on. Below are 5 different ways to impact new audiences and create opportunities to be found on search engines. SEO galore!

Pull out key statistics or talking points to post on social media and use the headlines for Twitter, with more in-depth thoughts used on Facebook.
Host a webinar or Google Hangout to discuss your blog post.
Make the audio transcription of your webinar or Hangout available – kind of like a Podcast.
Publish an FAQ with your answers, if your webinar or Hangout received questions.
Upload a recording of the webinar on YouTube.

Offer the content in different forms

Putting your content into different forms to be available, meaning that it makes more sense for your readers that are in varied areas of the sales process. Give these ideas a try.

– Post to Slideshow

Break your blog post into quick, easily-digestible pieces and touch on them throughout a slideshow. This is especially easy if you divided your blog post into separate key points by way of headers. Use each of these key points as a separate slide. This is a great way to share your content in a new manner. Give SlideShare a try for this option.

– Post to Infographic

While infographics are a more design-heavy option, it definitely is a fun choice. I personally love pinning and sharing infographics from sites like Pinterest. They’re informative and easy to read. Also, infographics give the ability to take something very complicated and break it down into pictures, making it much easier to understand.

– Slideshow to Infographic

If you’ve taken the time to make a blog post into a slideshow, making an infographic has become much simpler. Everything has already been broken down. You can also look at this in the opposite direction, as well. Infographics make creating a slideshow quite easy.

– Infographic to Motion Graphic

Motion graphics are videos that work much like infographics, presenting short-form, snackable content in an engaging way – but, because they’re animated, they have different sharing potential. Motion graphics have a quick ability to go viral.

Visual content to Pinboard

If you’re using a lot of images within your blog posts, Pinterest is a great place to focus your sharing. I recommend creating boards based on topics and pinning your own posts and information there. It’s amazing how fast things spread on this social network.

Create an eBook or ‘White Paper’

Find yourself returning to the same topic numerous times? Well, maybe you have enough information to warrant creating an eBook or White Paper to offer to your visitors. Offers such as these are commonly associated with landing pages and give the ability to capture leads prior to giving the interested party access. Both of these have become key pieces in content marketing.

Social Media

As it is probably a given, social media is one of the biggest ways to repurpose or bring life to your older blog posts. You can share the same article endlessly with different statuses to allow wide-spread interest to it. Remember that social media users respond differently to content depending on where it is posted. Twitter users expect a different approach than Facebook users do. Try to avoid posting the exact same wording across the board, it will be noticed.

I hope this post has assisted you in some options for how to bring new life to your older blog posts. Those “oldies but goodies” deserve just as much attention as any of your newer posts. Let us know how these go for you!

Best Business Books of 2015

Posted on January 4, 2016January 25, 2016 by Ken Granger

Reading is the quickest, easiest way to earn experience. It gives you the ability to learn from someone else’s experience and allows you to make it your own. So, we decided it would be beneficial to compile a list of the best business books of 2015

2015 was a great year for reading material to better yourself and your company’s morale. Below are seven works that we highly recommend due to their impact on BrandCo and our team’s performance. Not to mention, how we have decided to enter 2016.

What books impacted how you operate in 2015? Please, share with us so that we can grow together.

12 Days of BrandCo Christmas 2015

Posted on December 29, 2015December 30, 2015 by Ken Granger

We decided to use 12 fun, themed days to celebrate Christmas with our work family. Above, in this blog post’s featured image, you can take in the glory that is BrandCo’s 2015 Christmas tree. The whole team contributed and came together to decorate the tree with things that are important to us and our work life. You can find everything from desk knick-knacks to post-it notes. It really is a sight to behold.

Greeting Cards

Greeting Cards day was celebrated by all of our team members bringing in random Christmas cards. The cards were put into a bag and we all randomly drew our own. Three cards are passed around all of the days following for us all to say something nice to each other. (Yes, that one card does say Granddaughter on it lol)

Santa and His Reinbeer Day

What’s a Christmas celebration without Santa Hats? Well, definitely not one without a couple beers either. Reinbeer day was added in conjunction with Lager Day. Employees were allowed to kick back with a couple of cold ones while working and enjoying the festivities as they donned their Santa gear. Of course, this proved to be a day filled with extreme nerf gun battles, too!

Candy Cane Day

Candy canes are synonymous with Christmas and everyone has to favorite flavor. We purchased an assortment of canes for our team, including Starburst, Sour Patch Kids, traditional red & white peppermint, and Hershey Chocolate Mint.

Ginger Bread House Day

Team building was strong at BrandCo for Ginger Bread house day. Each side of the office got their own to decorate. Putting the main pieces together even proved difficult for us amateurs, but once we were past that hump, the creativity took over.

Christmas Telephone and Baby Photos

To say that BrandCo’s team were adorable babies, would be an understatement. We were all given a sheet with the baby photos shown here. Can you guess which of us are shown? Curious enough, we all had a lot of trouble picking each other out.

This day we also passed around two games of telephone, leading to some completely hilarious stories to read through.

Chocolate Covered Christmas

Chocolate day was soooo Rich. We had everything from marshmallows to Rice Krispy treats to dip in either our choice of milk or dark melted chocolate. Needless to say, our sweet-tooth were fully satisfied.

Winter Wonderland

Penguin stress balls and snowflakes were the focus on the Winter Wonderland day. Members of the team cut out and adorned our Christmas tree with themed snowflakes from Star Wars and Game of Thrones (yes, we’re quite nerdy around here).

Christmas Ornaments

More arts and crafts! As if we didn’t have enough on our office Christmas tree, we added more on! Each member was given two christmas ornaments to decorate by scratching. You can make a christmas tree or reindeer ornament.

Bah Humbug

Earlier in the month we were asked what our least favorite things about the holiday season were…and they ended up in a cross word puzzle. We were all given Bah Humbug pencils to fill it out with, topped with our very own lump of coal.

Reindeer Games

After some bad Oriental Trading reviews, this day didn’t quite go as planned. While we were looking to order a really cool antler game that you could throw rings at, we decided to go with these super cute reindeer beach balls to add to the festivities of the day. However, like most days, the office ended up breaking out their nerf guns. So, that counts, right?

Milk, Cookies, Nog, and Ugly Sweaters

Christmas eve eve was a hodge-podge of yummy goodies, interesting drinks, and bad fashion choices. Gesenia mixed the team up a batch of a Puerto Rican drink called Coquito, which I found delicious. Cookies that we all dug into early in the morning were brought in by Bianca. The four of us left at the end of the day made sure to get a photo of our tacky get-ups in front of our randomly decorated Christmas tree.

Secret Santa in our PJs

At the end of November, the team picked names out of a hat to get their Secret Santa assignment. Throughout the month of December, we all learned more about our assigned co-worker and tried to purchase them something they would love. This day we also came into work as comfortable as possible by donning our favorite pajamas. It was a great way to finish the work week before the holiday, by celebrating each other with gifts and comfort.

Thus ending another fabulous BrandCo Christmas filled with fun and time spent together.