Tag: John Jantsch

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…is a hot topic in every social media seminar I do. John Jantsch has some excellent guidance in this article…

“Facebook continues to grow in popularity with small business to the point where it’s no longer a matter of if you should be utilizing this platform as how. It’s really no surprise to me that Facebook is generally deemed more useful for the small business than other social media tools, such as twitter. The Facebook platform and applications are such that a business could feasibly build their entire web presence there – particularly now that Fan pages can be viewed publicly by non Facebook users.

So, the question I want to dive into today is this: What’s the best way to approach Facebook for your business?” Source: 3 Ways for Businesses to Take Full Advanage of Facebook | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

You’ll want to go to the source to get the answer. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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‘Thought leadership’ marketing takes time! Here’s one man’s perspective on taking that time to ‘make media’ as he says…

This is a chicken or the egg causality dilemma for me: as I create more media, my media consumption has changed or my media consumption has changed, hence I’m able to create more media. I really don’t know which came first but what I can tell you is that I definitely watch much less TV, read more than I ever have in my life, and listen to industry specific podcasts.I rarely watch TV anymore and when I do it is usually a sporting event, a movie, or Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. I just don’t find sitting mindlessly in front on the TV exciting anymore. Rather than watch TV, I take time with my family or read. Speaking of reading, I read all the time. Whether it’s a book, a blog, or the newspaper, not only do I find enjoyment in reading – I also find blog topics and ideas.

Finally, I have become a fan of podcasts. In my never ending quest to find time to exercise, which I still don’t do often enough anymore, I’ve started to walk and listen to podcasts at the same time. I feel like I’m killing two birds with one stone. There are many great podcasts out there but two I would recommend are John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing and Copyblogger’s Internet Marketing for Smart People Radio.

via schneiderb.com

Brendan Schneider has put together a thoughtful post on ‘making media’ [you can follow the ‘via’ link to read the whole post] in which he talks about ‘Getting Things Done’, staying away from the ‘idiot box’ [as my father was so fond of saying’], and creating a SMS — a social media system — for managing his social media outposts. I have a lot of similar needs and biases as Brendan and my social media system is called the ‘e1evation workflow‘ — kind of a ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle for ‘thought leadership’ marketing [my way of saying ‘make media’]. Comment or ‘connect’ above so we can talk about a ‘practical, tactical’ approach to social media how this applies to you and your organization…

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John Jantsch
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2011 marks my eighth year of blogging. In that time I’ve logged over 2500 blog posts, acquired around 143,000 subscribers and had this blog named by the likes of Forbes magazine as their favorite for both marketing and small business.

If this asset has delivered any measure of success I can tell you that the primary reason is that in that same time I’ve also read some or all of approximately 120,000 blog posts written by others. I’ve stated repeatedly that anyone that wants to start a blog, get better at blogging or make their blog a serious marketing tool for their business must first and foremost get very good at reading blogs…

Go to the source to read the article if you’d like to know John’s logic. Find it here: ducttapemarketing.com. Business blogging for both production and consumption are two of the most important activities in my day. ‘Connect with me’ if you’d like to know more about it…
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John Jantsch
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“These days I can’t get through a presentation on the use of social media in marketing without someone inquiring whether they should use Facebook as the primary web presence for their business.

“I mean, it’s free and look at all these cools tools you can add to your Fan Page.”

Let me be very clear on my thinking on this: Facebook is not the house, Twitter is not the house, your social profiles spread far and wide are not the house.

Your hub, your blog, your website—that’s the house. Build the house, fix the house, decorate the house and invite the party to the house, because it’s the one thing you can own and control. It’s an asset you can grow rather than space you simply rent.

Your activity in social media is all about building a persona and brand that draws people to the house, whether you’re a plumbing contractor, consultant, or someone that wants to create a path to a better career. Build rich and engaging hubs on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or wherever your prospects hang out, but remember you’re always going home.

Focusing too much attention on your Facebook play is like spending a bunch of time decorating and fixing up a neighbor’s house while they are traveling Europe for a year or two. It may be a nice place to throw a party or entertain, but you don’t really own it.” Source: Facebook Is Not the House :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Of all the social media luminaries, John Jantsch may be the one I most closely identify with. Why? His style is so practical and tactical and he communicates in a way that inspires me.

John nails it again with this post. Building your internet presence solely on Facebook is like building your home on rented land. Not recommended. At the same time, Facebook is a force too powerful to ignore. My advice? ‘Hold on Loosely’ as the great philosophers .38 Special advised…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJtf7R_oVaw

I strongly encourage you to go to the source and get the rest of John’s perspective. Comment below or ‘connect’ above to discuss how this applies to you and your organization…

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John Jantsch
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John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…

“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.

Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).

It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:

I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…

Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…

“Make yourself a better resource

Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.

Share content to draw attention

Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.

Filter personalized content

A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.

I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…

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John Jantsch says…

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, social media tools are killer for the small local business trying to drive people offline and into their businesses and to build deeper relationships with existing local customers.

For this episode of Local Color I met Scotty Wise an Indiana restaurateur and owner of Scotty’s Brewhouse that is has his business booming through the use of social media. The key in his case, and I think for any local business, is to move beyond simply building a Facebook page or Twitter feed and to look for ways to deeply integrate social media into everything you are doing.”

I say John rocks and if you’re a small business owner, sit up and pay attention while you watch the video. John goes on to say…

“In the case of Scotty’s Brewhouse, not only do they Tweet and use Facebook, they sponsor events that involve social media, use Foursquare to reward frequent customers and even built iPads into the booths at their newest store to allow existing customers to interact in deeper ways, connect on Twitter, sign up for their eclub and what videos of their meals being prepared. There’s even a Scotty’s iPhone app so you can order ahead, get coupons and learn about special events.”

Hello! Any small business owners listening?

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Will blogging become essential for lawyers to establish trust?

John Jantsch
Image via Wikipedia

In order to establish trust these days, producing helpful content for your target audience is essential. This per John Jantsch, publisher of Duct Tape Marketing, a leading resource on small business marketing.

…[P]eople today have come to expect to find information about any product, service, company, individual, cause or challenge they face by simply turning to the search engine of their choice. So, if they’re not finding content that you’ve produced that provides them that information, even if someone referred them directly to you, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t be worthy of their trust.

I guess I am going to tell you that you’ve got to commit to content production, but you’ve got to make it a part of your overall strategy and you’ve got to produce content with an eye on doing two things – educating and building trust.

What’s the leading way to produce content to build trust? Blogging says Jantsch.

I think a blog is the absolute starting point for your content strategy because it makes content production, syndication and sharing so easy. The search engines love blog content as well and this is the place where you can organize a great deal of your editorial thinking. Content produced on a blog can easily be expanded and adapted to become content for articles, workshops and ebooks.

Other content that can establish trust, per Jantsch, includes social media, reviews, testimonials, white papers, and FAQ’s. But with so many people reading blogs these days, including in-house counsel, and with blog content being regularly shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it’s difficult to see other content having the impact of a blog.

People looking for a lawyer are as apt to be doing research on the underlying legal issue they face as they are to be looking for a lawyer. For example, someone looking for an estate planning lawyer is also going to be looking for information on the estate planning issue they face, whether it a type of trust, a tax issue or something else. They’ll still hire a lawyer. They’re just doing research so they are informed.

via kevin.lexblog.com
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