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Years Worth of Posts Here

Archive for July 2007

Google Maps Gets Social

posted by:
Tue Jul 31, 2007
6 Comments |
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    gmaps1.jpgGoogle Maps (Google’s local directory) has recently started showing user reviews in it’s business directory listings.

    First, off if you haven’t listed your business in Google Maps – go here now and do so. Even if your business is in the listing take the time to sign up for a free account and enhance your listing. You can add product photos, hours of business, forms of payment, product lines. Great stuff for local searchers.

    Now, you can also add a review. (Or have some of your raving fans do so) Just surf to any local listing like this one for Duct Tape Marketing and take a look at the bubble on the map. Click on the “write a review” link and you can add your review of a local business. Initially it appears that they are also pulling reviews from other social sites like Insider Pages and Judy’s Book.

    Managing your online reputation through these social directory has become an increasingly important tool.

    Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 31, 2007 | 12:41 pm
    Categories  : Google, Local Search

    Take the Small Business Marketing Round-up Survey

    posted by:
    Mon Jul 30, 2007
    4 Comments |
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      qm.jpg I need your help!

      Lots of big research companies put out survey results that claim to tell the small business story.

      For some reason, I never feel like these firms end up understanding a darn thing from their research because they don’t understand small business in the first place. I’m pretty close to my readers and I think you reflect the small business world in every way. Help me tell the real story about small business marketing.

      Please join me in creating the Ultimate Small Business Marketing Round-up by completing a very short, multiple choice survey focused on finding out what it’s really like to be a small business marketer. (Wouldn’t you like to know how your marketing stacks up?)

      Thanks in advance – I’m looking forward to digging in and sharing these results with you.

      Take the short survey here

      Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 30, 2007 | 1:35 pm
      Categories  : Marketing Strategy, Small Business

      HTML Playground – reference by example

      posted by:
      Sun Jul 29, 2007
      2 Comments |
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        Great site for those who do a great bit of their own web design and need a reference site for using the right html tag – HTML Playground, html, css reference by example

        This is a very useful way to learn XHTML and CSS by seeing tag descriptions, example code, and results all with the click of a mouse.

        Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 29, 2007 | 5:32 pm
        Category  : Web design

        What Becomes a Small Business Brand?

        posted by:
        Sun Jul 29, 2007
        21 Comments |
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          Small business owners are often confused about the term brand, and rightly so. Big businesses obsess about this thing called branding, yet I think on the whole it has become a pretty souless term.

          Every small business has a brand? The question is whether the make-up of the brand is created intentionally or accidentally. There is little doubt in my mind that small businesses that find themselves in possession of what some would call a strong brand are far more likely to achieve great things than those that simply go our there and compete. But, a small business brand is so much more complicated than a tagline, colors or logos, a small business brand is everything the business does and has done, much like a biography – or in this case maybe a brandography.

          There is this wonderful line in the book Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje that gets at this for individuals.

          “Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. Why we make, why we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.”

          A small business brand is very much like this collage – made up of who the owner is, who the customers are, what the employees say, what the press says, and who you had lunch with today – in your business, everything is brandographical!

          So the question is, if you knew that in every action your business took you were in the process of creating a brand, if you were given the chance to create a strong brand through your actions – would that change how you viewed your business, would you write your brandography with intention?

          Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 29, 2007 | 4:09 pm
          Category  : Branding

          Automatic Blog Posts with delicious

          posted by:
          Fri Jul 27, 2007
          9 Comments |
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            deliciousThe delicious bookmarking tool has a fairly little known feature that bloggers can take advantage of. With the right settings you can have delicious post your bookmarks to your blog once a day as content. Here’s an example post links for 2007-07-27 | nicharalambous.com

            If you have a delicious account (heavens knows you should) and you want to enable this feature log in go to settings >> blogging >> daily blog posting. You can activate it putting blog’s username and password and Post URL (If you use WordPress it’s something like http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/xmlrpc.php)

            Once you have this set-up, every time you bookmark in delicious it will be collected and posted to your blog as that day’s collection of links. Because you are making these public it’s a good idea to write good descriptions when you book mark. You also want to remember that anything you bookmark will show up on your blog, so if you don’t want it to you need to make sure you click the don’t make public box.

            Too much of this would be pretty boring, but it can be a nice way to create dual posts for a day or come up with your a list of themed links around one subject for a Friday post.

            Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 27, 2007 | 3:29 pm
            Categories  : Blogging, delicious

            Another Duct Tape Business Blog Theme Release

            posted by:
            Thu Jul 26, 2007
            8 Comments |
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              A few weeks ago I teamed up with WordPress Theme designer Cory Miller to create a business oriented theme for WordPress. The response to this release was great.

              The one request I received the most was to release a version of the theme that would allow the user to create and upload their own custom graphic header. So, here you go Duct Tape Business Blog Theme Released With New Header Logo Image

              Duct Tape Blog Theme

              Key features:

              * Three column
              * Web 2.0 look
              * Widget ready
              * Header graphic (PSD file included)
              * 125×125 graphical ad ready for your products and services

              Take it for a test run here.
              Download it here.

              Support post for this theme.

              Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 26, 2007 | 10:49 am
              Categories  : Blogging, WordPress

              A Facebook and Google Reader App for Bloggers

              posted by:
              Thu Jul 26, 2007
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                Google ReaderA few weeks ago I wrote a post pointing out the growing usefulness of Facebook as a business tool. It isn’t that I am so enamored with the social network as I am optimistic that the new open platform will allow developers to create some very useful business applications.

                Today I want to tell you about one such application that I think meets that criteria. The application is called Google Shared Items. This application allows Facebook members to easily do two very useful things. First, it makes it very easy to feature your blog posts on your profile page (your Facebook home page) allowing your network to get a taste of your blog. There are other ways to do this, but this one really works well.

                The real power behind that app though is that it also allows you to see a list of all the blog posts that your friends/network have shared (Shared by bookmarking them in their Google Reader) and then ranked as the most popular items. This feature gives you your very own Digg like tool to discover changing content that, if your network is like minded, will provide you with a fabulous resource of relevant reading that you may never discover on your own.

                The application is very simple to install and does require a Google Reader account as well. You can see my public Google Reader Shared stream here. This is the content that is then flowing to the Facebook application for other to view and share. Of course, this is for any content in your reader that your want to share, not just your own blog posts, but those of all the blogs you read – and it throws off an RSS feed so there are countless other ways for you to repurpose this content outside of Facebook as well.

                A lot of folks are flocking to Facebook and then getting there and saying, now what?

                So, if you’ve discovered business uses and applications for business use, post a comment and let us know!

                Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 26, 2007 | 5:51 am
                Categories  : Facebook, Google

                Advertising Age to Use the ToddAnd Power 150

                posted by:
                Wed Jul 25, 2007
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                  advertisingageTodd Andrlik, a marketing and PR guy known to most as Todd And and creator of the Power 150 – top marketing blogs, announced today that AdvertisingAge will be taking over his little creation and plans to integrate it into their coverage of marketing and media.

                  I think it’s a tribute to some hard work on Todd’s part to have created something AdAge thought worthy of partnering with and a further sign that blogging has truly become too important for mainstream media and advertisers to ignore.

                  From Jonas Bloom, editor of Advertising Age

                  The fact we’ll now also be ranking the media and marketing blogs says a lot about how important that community has become in a very short time.

                  Posted by  : John Jantsch on Jul 25, 2007 | 12:42 pm
                  Categories  : Blogging, New Media
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