The competition has begun! We have divided into teams and the will to win is as strong as ever. For the second year in a row, I’m on the green team! Today the schedule of events consisted of introductions, team building, session 1 with John Jactsch, a blogging team activity, a reception, and a lego creation task. Not our normal day, but it was fun!

Here are my notes from John Jactsch’s, Duct Tape Marketing, session:

Marketing= getting someone that has a need to know, like and trust you. (This has, is, and will forever be the definition of marketing… what has changed is how we get someone to know, like and trust us.)

The 4 P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion) are long gone. Marketing now consists of 4 C’s: Content, Context, Connection, and Community.

As a small business, we have to harness the internet and move beyond brochure-ware.

Our new tools consist of… interactive content, blogs/podcasts, RSS, social news/bookmark, social/local searches, social network. There is a heirarchy to these tools with blogging being the most fundamental and social networking being the most actualized (I disagree with this).

Podcasts can give a small business journalistic credibility.

Try not to think about how everyone else is using new media. Think of new ways to use is to attract and grow new business.

Search engines love blogs

How to get started blogging… 1) Monitor other blogs 2) Comment on other blogs 3) Start Blogging

Best Practices of Blogging… 1) Read blogs 2) Post often 3) Network with quality bloggers 4) encourage community 5) link out

What is a quality blog… 1) Post often 2) have a topic focus 3) generate comments 4) length of blogging 5) Links out to other blog

Create keyword rich headlines

PR web helps small businesses distribute news