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…

Last week, I went to the city for several new business, client and partner meetings. Now, when I say the “city” I mean New York City. Growing up outside Manhattan for 14 years there really is only ONE city- and it’s New York. As a Bostonian and now suburbanite, when I head into Boston, I head into “town”, but I digress…

Some quick thoughts to share:

• Don’t bother bringing your iPhone. Seriously, it’s dead weight in your pocket, the AT&T network is simply too overloaded
• Be sure to visit the new “underground” Apple Store on Fifth Avenue- across from the old Plaza
• To save a few dollars, and to get some much needed exercise, I walked most of my way through Manhattan. Grand Central to 90th and 2nd. 90th and 2nd to 86 and Lex (through park), Wall Street to 16th and 6th. Best decision I made.  You simply can’t spend time in taxicabs or the subway when you’re in the city, you “feel’ the city by walking through each neighborhood.
• The site of the Twin Towers is still very much an empty space. Hard to believe it happened 9 years ago.
• Can’t wait to bring the family there next week, next month, or very very soon!
• Interesting fact of the day: I traveled to NY from the Greenwich train station. More people go IN to Greenwich to work, then go OUT of Greenwich to head to the big Apple- who knew?
• If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, seriously consider switching over to Apple.  While your iPhone doesn’t work, you can still do lots at the Apple Store (there are five of them in Manhattan) While at one of their stores, I was able to get an hour of training on some new company software, recharge my latpop, warm up (it was 29 degrees out) and enjoy the company of some genuinely nice, friendly people. It’s practically like having a remote office in every city.

Yesterday, YouTube announced the formation of YouTube direct- a new platform for news organizations that allows them to “request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease.” It’s a new idea already in use by the likes of NPR, ABC News, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and more. I wonder what it does to:

A: the economics and structure of news organizations
B: The attitude and perspective of “citizen journalists”

This means lots of things, in no particular order….

1. I think it continues to set YouTube ahead of the smaller (and really smart, good ) competitiors like Vimeo, Viddler and more. They thought they had their work cut out for them before, look out now…

2. It will change the way news organization gather their information. The Channel 7  news truck won’t have to head to the fire on Main Street because videos are being uploaded already by citizen journalists. They can simply report back on the story from their cozy studios and get  the facts from interns and young reporters on their cell phones and laptops.

3. What’s in it for the citizen journalist? Nothing really. What’s the incentive of sending ABC news the exclusive (and only) video you caught of say, the plane landing in the Hudson river? It will get uploaded and viewed on ABC News and abcnews.com, not necessarily to your YouTube channel- if you are a new business owner trying to make a name for yourself with some video, forget about it.

4. What makes a “news organization” in this day and age? Dialogue just signed up  (applied) for this program last night. Am I an official news outlet? Why? Why not?

5. How is this going to sync with the existing YouTube channels created by News organizations? Will this simply complement the effort or begin to take traffic away from the channel.

So, these are some initial thoughts for the day. What do you think?