I had the pleasure of attending a social media presentation from John Jantsch at the Key Entrepreneur Center eMarketing Techniques workshop in Cleveland, Ohio last week.

John, the author of Duct Tape Marketing, gave an impactful and practical presentation geared toward small businesses and entrepreneurs. John’s take was the same as mine: there has never been a better time to grow a small business – especially with the various amounts of tools available online.

Before I get to some of John’s marketing secrets – here were a couple of key points made by John:

Simplify the definition of marketing – “Getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.” If you can put your marketing strategies behind this easy to understand definition, it can make your ultimate vision and tactics that much easier for you and your customers to comprehend.
It’s not the 4 P’s, it’s the 4 C’s – Buying behavior has changed in such a way that Product, Price, Place and Promotion give way to Content, Context, Connection and Community.
Nothing builds trust faster that content delivered in context, packaged in a way that your customers can easily engage in (can you say “content marketing”?).
Blogging is not something nice to do anymore, it’s a necessity. According to John, those individuals who execute a blog that offers unique and relevant information to a precisely targeted audience has a significant competitive advantage over those who do not. In a conversation with John before the presentation, he said that blogging is his secret weapon (and then shared this with the audience as well).

John’s presentation was packed full of practical advice, but I want to share with you those tips and techniques that I personally will implement as a result of John’s presentation. I consider myself a better than average user on the social media scale, but John offered some truly unique suggestions that were incredible helpful.

Having trouble keeping your business calendar of events or speaking engagements? Here’s an easy solution. Create a Google calendar and populate it with business or speaking events. From that, create a Feedburner feed of the Google calendar. Then just place the Feedburner RSS code within your web page or blog. Both services are free. I plan to use this for my speaking events and place on the blog.

John also suggested doing the same thing regarding following who’s covering your in the press. Just create a Google Alert for what you want to cover. In my case, it would be “Joe Pulizzi”. Then create a Feedburner RSS feed for that alert and place the code on your website.
Every business has the ability to place specific information on the Google Maps page specific to their business address. John created a video for his page.
Read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” John says that in the age of keeping up with social media and finding time for the right behaviors, this book’s a must read.
Consider creating a strategic partnership with other “non-competitive” businesses within your industry to create an industry educational blog. John says that the possibility exists that your blog could become industry standard in short order if the bloggers focus on consistent, relevant content.
Build your hub. John advises to take your URL name (i.e., www.johnjantsch.com) and develop an informational place that updates anyone on what you are currently working on. He offers this suggestion in replacement for the 20-line signature lines in emails (i.e., LinkedIn, Facebook, Book, etc.). Now, you can send people to one page that has every way to find out about what you are up to.
Add the Sharethis function to all blog and web posts.
Get involved with Yahoo! Answers. John calls this a hidden treasure for building your business. Just go find people asking questions in your industry and answer them in thoughtful ways. Of course, you can link to a resource on your website or blog that will provide more information. John also suggests Yahoo! Answers as a great place to find blog posting ideas.
LinkedIn Answers feature – use it! Not sure how to use all those connections via LinkedIn? Ask and answer questions. John detailed a few examples of how he garnered additional press just by answering a simple question.

Of course, there were many more expert ideas from John, but the ones above are the secrets that I have on my “to-do” list to begin immediately. If you are looking for a book to kick-start your marketing, get John’s book, Duct Tape Marketing today.

Thanks John, for all the helpful advice.

PS – Those of you who know me have heard me talk about “being the brand” or living your brand experience in public. I do this by almost always wearing orange. John does this by having duct tape everywhere he goes. You should have seen how some of the tables were fighting over taking John’s duct tape samples home. Talk about effective branding.

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