If you are a small business on a shoe-string budget, look no further than Duct Tape Marketing. Today’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” continues with
the 7 Habits of John Jantsch.
About John
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine
1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
Paying attention to what’s going on around me and writing about it daily
2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
Coffee – I have a routine of sites, email, engagement, Twitter, etc that I run through – I guess it’s part of my overall systems approach
3. What makes you efficient with your day?
GTD and Central Desktop – I’ve always been a list maker
4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
The Practice of Management – Peter Drucker – although it may not seem like it, it’s the best marketing book I’ve ever read
5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
24″ Monitor, Moleskin notebook, Jug of green tea
6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
Coffee
7. Habit you want to form for 2010
Increase Yoga and running practices
For those of you interested in being a lean, mean entrepreneurial machine, read on.
You’ve just started your own company, and now the bills start coming in. Rent, internet, computer, software, cell phone and more. Your cell phone is terrific. Good reception, a good plan and you are reachable all the time.
But every now and then you lose a call.
OR
The battery on your cell phone dies.
OR
Business is really good, and you are thinking about upgrading to an unlimited plan with all the minutes you need. Hello $200 cell phone bill.
Before you upgrade to that new plan, or put in a “land line” in the office. Take a look at Skype.
A $30 yearly plan is all you need to start saving money on your phone bill and start ramping up on efficiency.With a yearly $30 subscription you can make all the calls you need from your computer. If you’re in some sort of office at least three to fours a day, consider investing in it.
A couple things to keep in mind- If you have a bluetooth headset for your mobile phone, this works nicely with Skype. Simply sync up your headset to your bluetooth-enabled laptop and you are talking through your computer. The reception is better than your mobile phone (no more dropped calls) and you can talk to your client ( hands free) while skimming through that powerpoint presentation, invoice, or pile of mail on your desk. Even better? You can sync your mobile phone with your skype account so that when you call, it looks like you are calling from your mobile phone.
Last time I checked, $30 for unlimited calls for an entire year wasn’t such a bad idea, was it?
Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and others have plenty of business customers. Be a lean, mean and smart entrepreneurial machine.
Go give Skype your business.
I recently redeemed some leftover frequent flier miles for a year long print subscription to the Wall Street Journal. This cost me about 2,800 points. So, some immediate reactions and a suggestion to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
This is a GREAT deal. The Newsstand price would have a value of at least a couple hundred dollars. If you were to go online today and order a year-long print subscription to the WSJ, it would cost you $110.
So, for 2,800 airline miles you are getting a year full of great WSJ content ($110) for a value of about .04 per mile. Let’s compare that to some other things you can get for roughly the same amount of miles…
A $25 GAP gift card from American Express’s Membership Rewards= 2500 points or .01 per mile
A $17 bottle of Oreck Pet Stain Remover = 2400 points or .007 cents per mile
Dirt from Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox) = 2400 points or .007 cents per mile
Now, we can have fun answering the following questions…
- Isn’t DIRT from Fenway Park worth more than a bottle of Pet Cleaner? (Yankees/Red Sox fans will have fun with this one)
- A 4 year subscription to the WSJ is worth 100 bucks at the Gap.
- And my personal favorite , some dirt from Fenway Park is less valuable than a year long subscription to the WSJ..
And, ask ourselves the following questions….
How do we value the offline (print only) edition of the Wall Street Journal? And for that matter, the value of any other newspaper/publication struggling with their business model now?
And my favorite question
The Mags for Miles program currently only allows print subscriptions to the WSJ and select magazines. With the WSJ and now the NYT soon charging for online content, why isn’t an online subscription available? It’s a terrific opportunity to engage a new audience and use us some of those leftover points…
