Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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I reported on this little application just about a year ago when TechSmith announced it. JingProject is a lite weight screen recording tool for Windows and Mac that also comes with some hosting and streaming from Screencast.com

It’s an easy to use free tool for recording little screen video captures and sending in emails or posting to your blog or website. I get questions from readers every now and then that are much easier to answer by showing. You can also use it to send in technical support questions with software or hardware by showing the problem you are having

The only issue I had with the original configuration was that you didn’t get much file or bandwidth space. Yesterday JingProject upped it to 2 GB of storage plus 2 GB of transfer. That’s 10 times the space and double the bandwidth and it’s still free.

It’s still not robust enough to make your primary screencast video tool, but it’s a nice handy addition to the video tool belt.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 24, 08 | 7:07 am
Category: Tools I Use, online marketing | Tags: , JingProject, Sceencast.com, TechSmith

One of the trade-offs involved with using blog software that resides on your server is that you may have to endure updates to add new features and fix potential security risks. Hosted services such as TypePad or Compendium Blogware simply push these live without any work on the part of the user. I for one think the benefit of hosting the software on my domain outstrips any hassle involved in updates.

Especially when you employ the WordPress Automatic Ugrade Plugin. I upgraded my entire blog to WordPress 2.6 in less than 5 minutes using this plug in. The tool also backs up all your files and database before it starts. That’s one of the nice things about open source software. If something doesn’t work just right somebody will write a fix.

By the way, lots of new features and little added toys in this upgrade - seems well worth doing.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 23, 08 | 11:11 am
Category: Blogging, Social Media, Tools I Use, WordPress | Tags:

Before you blog, before you create a social media strategy of any sort, you need to listen. By listen I mean tune into the truckloads of relevant industry content that’s being put out there, filtered and aggregated for your review. If you’re going to do that you want to start by following some of the top blogs that pertain to your industry.

Alltop is a site that aggregates only the top (I know, that’s a bit subjective) blog posts from around the Internet and puts them in one place for you. They started out with some of the most natural categories such as marketing and small business but recently grew to add just about any category you might want to research - adoption to yoga.

This is a great pit stop on your way to tuning in, networking, getting smarter and discovering your own social media play.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 23, 08 | 6:06 am
Category: Blogging, Social Media | Tags: , Alltop, Guy Kawasaki

One of the first successful PPC ad systems was service called Overture. One of the most popular features of this service was a tool called the Search Suggestion Tool. Anyone online back in say 2002-2003 used this tool a bunch to help determine what search phrases received the most traffic. This was one very simple DIY tool.

When Yahoo bought out Overture the tool languished and eventually went away. In my opinion this was a big mistake on the part of Yahoo. (But that’s a conversation for another day)

Click on the screenshot below to see full size

Google recently enhanced their keyword suggestion tool and added search volume and some measure of competitiveness. The reason the PPC engines offer tools like this is to help people get better at bidding on search terms and offer suggestions for more terms to bid on. Serious PPC folks use this tool to help determine bid amounts and bid on thousands of search terms. (If you have an AdWords account this tool is built into your dashboard.)

I’ve found that this tool is also a nice, low effort way to get some ideas for keyword phrases for your web pages and blog posts. The tool offers suggestions for ways that people are really searching in your industry and might spark some ideas for blog headlines. Of course, for local businesses, this can be a great way to identify terms that you might want to add your city name to.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 22, 08 | 9:09 am
Category: Google, Keywords, Search Engines, Yahoo | Tags: , Adwords, Keyword suggestion tool, Overture

My guest on this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is John Assaraf. You may recall the John was a central figure in the wildly popular - The Secret. John’s core message of bringing the principles of quantum physics to business through his new book The Answer is an important leap that small business owners need to better understand.

Some of the current thinking around attraction and other natural laws can feel a little “new age” in business circles but I think it’s pretty hard to deny the power of applying these concepts to growing a business that is authentic and life enriching. I often tell people who feel like this too big of a step to take a little piece of this and see if they can find something in it that helps them better understand how the universe works. Growing a small business is a lot of work, why not arm yourself with every tool possible?

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 21, 08 | 9:09 am
Category: Business Books | Tags: , John Assaraf, The Answer, The Secret

Local search, the act of showing up on page one when surfers type in phrases that hint they are looking for a local business, requires much of the same focus as any type of optimization - only localized.

Here’s what I mean.

Winning the search game takes 3 things (yes, SEO folks will tell you it’s 300, but focus on these 3 and you will do better than most.)

• High quality, education based, frequently changing content
• Naturally generated, inbound links from high quality sites
• Properly formated and used HTLM coding

Focus on the list above and you will go far. Again, this is not the definitive “every trick in the book” SEO list. This is the practical, what most local small business web sites need to focus on first, list.

For the local business, the list is the same, the content is simply local focused.

1) Content - use the names of cities and suburbs on your pages, add your address and Google maps, talk about local and community events in your blog posts and titles. Link out to local sites using town and neighborhood names in the anchor text.
2) Links - this one is not as local focused but get links from your local chamber directories, local school alumni directories, local strategic partners, your blog network
3) HTML - use local words in you title tags of pages, anchor text for internal and external links, H1 tags, bold and italics tags, urls of page names, and alt and title description of images. Make sure anything you do that highlights content makes sense to eyeballs as well. Don’t overuse this mark-up, just use it to help point to your site.

Here’s an example of a site that does this well. It’s a remodeling contractor looking for business in the Kansas City area. Most home services related searches are local in nature so this is a pretty competitive industry.

The site is RemodelAgain.com, but searches for Kansas City Remodeling Contractor or Kansas City Kitchen Remodel, both extremely important search phrases for this business, turn up very high results for this site.

This is a long time customer of mine so I know for a fact that these results were achieved by simply focusing on the three steps above.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 21, 08 | 8:08 am
Category: Local Search | Tags:

Back in high school being called easy wasn’t exactly a compliment, but when it comes to your business, it’s essential.

Web folks like to talk about frictionless businesses or web sites as those that are very simple for the visitor to navigate and experience. There are many place your business can fall down in this regard and all perform a marketing function, for good or bad.

So, here are some common places to look and make sure you are easy.

Are you easy:
• To communicate with - voicemail, email, contact us page, IM, click to call,
• To understand - narrowly defined market, simple core message of value
• To listen to - two or three well developed presentations on message
• To speak to - ability to listen and advise, know when to say no and thank you
• To network with - think give before get, throw away the score card
• To trust - consistency and content, be the authentic you, educate - don’t sell
• To buy from - smooth transaction, delivery, follow-up
• To work with - engaging experience, results driven
• To refer - tools that teach how to refer, give partners way to refer - workshops

I’ve found one or more of these to be gaps in the overall experience for most small business marketers and in many cases, some strategic thought mixed with an effective process can be the ticket to enhancing your overall brand and ultimately putting more money in your pocket.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 18, 08 | 11:11 am
Category: Branding, Customer Service, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Referral Marketing, Strategic Partnering | Tags:

I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to RSS technology. I just get really excited about all the things you can do to automate your learning and marketing and gain access to filtered content any place you want it.

I don’t think small business folks can here this enough - don’t get too concerned about what it is or how it works - it’s just plumbing - get excited about what you can do with it.

Even if you have no clue what RSS is, there’s a good chance you’ve consumed an RSS feed one way or another by way of blog content. Every blog comes equipped with the programming to write to RSS feeds. This can be in the form of a main blog feed, category specific feed or even a comment feed.

But RSS technology is everywhere now and is the secret to allowing your to filter through the flood of information you need to be tracking just to stay competitive. And, there’s more.

In the course of a day I use RSS to check out what’s being said about Duct Tape Marketing, post content that I bookmark to web pages, update event calendars, publish blog snippets to three other web sites, monitor several industries, keep tabs on projects, send personalized data to customers, update product pages, track the weather where my kids live, discover new music, update my extended family on happenings and photos, find vegetarian recipes, and keep track of the MLB. That’s just on slow days. Once the routines are put in place much of the blur of info processing and publishing is done automatically.

Here are two resources for your RSS learning pleasure:
1. Everything I’ve written and recorded on the subject
2. 100 Cool Things You Can Do With RSS

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jul 17, 08 | 9:09 am
Category: Blogging, Fun with RSS, RSS, Social Media | Tags: