[00:00:00.840] – Narrator
In this podcast, you’ll get discussions and interviews one hundred percent dedicated to helping small business owners tackle their marketing challenges. The Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast is produced by the Marketing Guides for Small Business, a collection of five small business marketing consultants with dozens of years of combined experience in helping small business owners plan, execute, measure their marketing plans and strategies in order to grow their business at a rapid pace. Your host and panelists include Ken Tucker, owner and chief marketing strategist at Changescape Web in St. Louis. Paul Barthel, chief technical officer at Changescape Web. Dan Gershenson is CEO of Calibur Brand Strategy and Content Marketing in Chicago. Ian Cantle, president and chief marketing strategist at Outsourced Marketing Inc. in Bradford, Ontario. Jen Kelly, founder and CEO of New Initiatives Marketing in Toronto. So thank you for checking us out and please let us know how we can better help you grow your business.
[00:01:06.990] – Ken
Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Marketing Guides for Small Businesses podcast. I’m Ken Tucker and I’m the host today. And I’m joined by Ian, Paul, Dan and Jen. So welcome, guys. Thank you.
[00:01:21.420] – Ken
We’re going to kind of nerd out on a topic that I know we all spend a lot of time and energy on, and that’s staying up to date with everything that’s going on in the world of business and marketing. I thought it’d be a great time as the economy in the US looks like it could be really poised to open up and, and strengthen. Now’s a perfect time for everybody to really start thinking, how can I kick everything into gear for my business?
[00:01:45.720] – Ken
And so I thought, what better way to start it than to have a conversation about what our favorite books or sources are for helping us stay up to date with everything that’s going on. So you guys jump in and elaborate on any of the topics that I kick out to you guys. I’ll get started.
[00:02:03.120] – Ken
There are three books that always just kind of come to the forefront of my mind. Those are ‘Fix This Next’ just because I got certified in it so I’m pretty psyched about that. But I love the fact that it’s a, it gives you just a really great business analysis tool to help you start solving business problems. And I come from an information technology approach that was based on this concept called enterprise architecture planning, where you look at putting systems together, like you’re doing architecture, like you’re building a house. How would you create the foundation to create that sturdy structure to support the rest of the business, and in this case I spent years and years developing an expertise in this whole world of enterprise architecture planning. So when I came across ‘Fix This Next’ and also I did a lot of work with corporate culture in my master’s degree program. And so Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has always been a big deal. Having a business hierarchy of needs just made awesome sense to me. So I’m really excited about that.
[00:03:07.260] – Ken
Another one that I’m really always psyched about is ‘Story Brand’, just because if there’s one book that I could just tell people for a podcast or audio book, go listen to this. This is the clearest, simplest way you can think about your message, your core message. It’s such a great book.
[00:03:26.490] – Ken
And then the third book is just incredibly important, is a book called ‘Subscribed’, and it’s just talking about how subscription-based models are replacing almost every other buying behavior in almost every industry, even the way you buy a car. Car manufacturers are now starting to sell subscriptions and they’re different from leases because it’s all-encompassing. It’s not only the car, it’s the maintenance plan. It’s the insurance. You can swap out a car. Like if you live in a big urban area where parking is a pain, you might face your subscription with a small, compact vehicle so it’s easy to get around. But then if you’re going to go on a cross-country trip, you might want to get a little bit bigger vehicle so that you’re more comfortable, maybe you sit up a little higher on the road and you can swap it out. It’s a really cool model. And I think every business, and we’ve all done this as marketers, for us, marketing is not a one-and-done kind of thing. It really is kind of a subscription.
[00:04:30.750] – Ken
You have to get recurring set of services to keep going with your marketing activities. And so ‘Subscribed’ is a fantastic book. I think if you look at, HVAC contractors have figured this out. They do a twice-a-year clean and check, I know we’ve talked about that in the past, one in the spring, one in the fall, gets your air conditioner or your heating unit tuned up and ready to go, makes sure it doesn’t break in your critical season, every business should try to figure out how can they get a subscription in play, and a subscription service in place.
[00:05:02.860] – Ken
With that, I want to kick it over to you guys, and we’re not just going to limit it to books obviously, we want to talk about blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, any other publications you guys go with. So, Dan and Jen, I know you guys really focus a lot on B2B much more so than I do. What are the books or sources that you guys recommend and kind of your go-to? Dan I’ll start with you and then Jen, why don’t you jump in?
[00:05:28.930] – Dan
For B2B I think I always rely on Jay Baer, who we’ve seen multiple times or I’ve seen multiple times, all of us saw.
[00:05:38.860] – Ken
He wrote the back cover of our book that we wrote together?
[00:05:42.630] – Dan
He did. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great reminder. I can’t get away from Neil Patel. He always has really valuable things that he puts out, like daily. So that’s really big. I will say there are a lot of things data-wise that we geek out on from marketing charts, which always has some really valuable charts and graphs. But we then take that and we use that as a launch pad for video or a blog post or something like that.
[00:06:13.360] – Dan
So we don’t just throw it up there and call it a day. That’s been a really big thing, the favorite of mine for things that I might read online, Search Engine Journal, I think always digs in deeper. And then, of course, our guy, John Jantsch, has things that he puts out every week as far as new tools and new insights to keep in mind. I have been geeking out on some tools, I will say. So I find myself reading about those too.
[00:06:43.240] – Dan
The big ones that I’m working with right now are one that is called Bonjoro. It’s a video email tool. So I think this is going to be a big deal for a lot of folks who are prospecting and get into personalization. So that one is something I’m playing around with as part of the funnel, which is something that we talked about. I also love a tool called Paper Flite, which is Paper F-l-i-t-e. It allows you to create landing pages that are customized towards each person very, very quickly.
[00:07:17.350] – Dan
So I’m loving that so far as part of the funnel. And then there was another one that escapes me right now. But I will tell you the book I’m reading, and this is not B2B, but it does relate to who I am as a business owner and in terms of strategy, positioning and voice of who I am each day. And that book is Brenee Brown’s ‘Braving the Wilderness’. So this book for me, I think has been really a big one for finding my courage and finding that it’s not just being different, but also being true to who you are.
[00:07:57.880] – Dan
And a lot of people in the last year really noticed this. And what you see is what you get with Dan. It’s not a face. It’s not a brand, here’s Brand-Dan and then here’s real Dan, that doesn’t exist. And I think this book, more than any other, is responsible for that. So that one is a great one for you to pick up if you are a business owner struggling with that challenge of, how much do I want the world to see of me and how much do I want the world to see of my brand? And how do the two have a relationship that works for me? I find personally it to be exhausting to try and have two different things there. So I’ve tried to be as authentic as possible and within reason. So that book is probably the most responsible and most important book that I have read in the last year.
[00:08:46.240] – Ken
Wow, that’s interesting. I just posted a quote out there for one of our clients from her.
[00:08:51.430] – Dan
Yeah, that’s the big ones for me right now.
[00:08:54.370] – Ken
Alright. Jen, what do you got going on?
[00:08:56.710] – Jen
It’s funny because in putting together the books for this podcast, I was thinking a lot about our audience and business owners and things that would cut across no matter what industry you’re in or no matter if you’re running a two person show or two hundred person show. So I’ve got some oldies but goodies they’re standing the test of time. I’ve got three here.
[00:09:17.420] – Jen
Number one, ‘Effective Executive’ by Peter Drucker. This is really good no matter if you consider yourself a suit-and-tie white collar executive or you know, you’re a hoodie executive or a blue-collar executive, it really helps out with trying to figure out, what are all the things that need to get done, how am I supposed to get them all done, what are the most important tasks to really focus my time on? It’s timeless and very, very, very helpful.
[00:09:42.100] – Jen
The second one here is ‘Execution’. And this isn’t just because our company deals and supports a lot of other marketing agencies with the execution of their programs. But in here, and this is written by CEO of Honeywell International. So this is from the Fortune 100 size type of company. And the message in that book is that the execution not only of marketing programs, of your supply chain, of your accounting and your sales and the running of your business can actually be a real competitive advantage. So it’s really key for any size business to, to read that one.
[00:10:18.640] – Jen
And the last one, this is one that I wouldn’t blame you if you walk past it in the bookstore because the cover needs some marketing help on it. It’s in its 30th year of publication. It’s called ‘The Goal’. And it’s written like a fable, very important for all types of businesses, because what it focuses on is, where are the constraints that are tripping you up in your business? And it’s written like a fable, written like a story from a first-person point of view of this fellow who’s trying to get this factory to run smoothly. Now, whether you’re producing software or you’re producing services or, you know, a million miles away from any kind of factory work, the lessons in this book are really important so that you can take a look in your own business. If you, if you’re wondering, like I thought we had it all together, I thought we had systems and processes going on. Why are they always breaking down? Is it me? Is it my people or is it the way we have it set up? This book will really, really help you. I would say if you’re going to pick it up, if you can just get to the part where the main character takes the crowd camping, just get to that part and then it’ll open up. It’s a little bit of a slog until then.
[00:11:29.200] – Ken
All right, cool. That is so important, to scale. You cannot scale until you address operational issues and execution so cool. That’s great.
[00:11:40.090] – Ian
Ian, we’ve been talking a lot about funnels in the last several weeks. So where do you get your information on how to stay up to date with the latest funnel strategies, what’s working, what’s not working? Yeah, so go for that.
[00:11:54.040] – Ian
Sure. My favorite funnels come from Home Depot because they come in all different shapes and sizes, sources that I use…
[00:12:03.820] – Ken
So I guess Lowe’s is not going to be, ever be a…..
[00:12:08.290] – Ian
And here in Canada, we have Canadian Tire. Anyway so we’ve got lots of great ones here too. No, but on the the marketing funnel side, there are a ton of fantastic resources out there. Some of my favorites are, Neil Patel was mentioned already. He kind of shows up in every area of digital marketing and he is a fantastic resource. Noah Kagan is a good one as well. I wanted to mention this guy’s a little bit more of a niche or niche guy, and I don’t even know how to pronounce his last name properly but it’s Shane Melaugh, I think, and he’s actually the founder of Thrive Themes, which we use a lot for websites. He is an excellent business mind and understands funnels really well and does a lot of training on that.
[00:12:50.950] – Ian
If I move off of, kind of, the day to day information, the books that I love that talk about funnels are ‘Marketing Made Simple’ by Donald Miller. Ken mentioned ‘Story Brand’. Donald Miller was the author of ‘Story Brand’. ‘Marketing Made Simple’ is excellent because it pulls in ‘Story Brand’ and actually brings it into, how to build that out into funnels and landing pages and everything involved, in emails. So that’s a very, very practical.
[00:13:17.230] – Ken
Matter of fact when I went through the Story Brand Guide Training, I came up with this concept which I know some other colleagues of ours in the Duct Tape community have taken it and run with called the Sales Funnel Framework. And then he turned it into a book called ‘Business Made Simple’. So, yeah, I mean, it’s a brilliant book for that.
[00:13:34.660] – Ian
Those are my main sources. Another really great source, and this is just general marketing information, but funnels always fall into here, is an email that you can subscribe to called Stack Marketer. It’s just excellent information, especially if you’re really deep into digital marketing. And then the other sources I use are always related to the particular tools that we use to deliver funnels. So if you’re heavy into Active Campaign or Keap or any of these tools, most of those platforms have excellent blogs that are trying to help you get the most out of those tools to deliver funnels. I highly recommend any of those blogs. They’re all trying to compete with each other, so they’re delivering excellent content.
[00:14:15.270] – Ken
Speaking of that, do you do anything in terms of like Facebook groups that are tools-related or topic-related that help you stay top of mind like, I don’t know, an Active Campaign Facebook group or something like that?
[00:14:26.960] – Ian
Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah, Facebook, YouTube, you name it. And I’m always looking for the best and most reliable information because there’s an awful lot of noise out there. My advice to myself that I try to take, but to everyone else is, is choose carefully the voices you let into your business because there are so many voices out there. You want to make sure they’re reliable and they actually know what they’re talking about.
[00:14:50.710] – Ken
Cool. All right, Paul, I know you love to get into the technical details and inner workings of things. And you, probably more than anybody else, I don’t want to speak for you guys, but I know certainly for me, you get down into the weeds and love that kind of stuff as it relates to a lot of different types of marketing technology. So where do you go to get information, deeper dive technical stuff on a variety of topics? And I’d like for you to kind of talk about two things. One is, those sources that provide great technical information but make it accessible to the layperson who doesn’t have all of the language and jargon that we all use as marketers. And then second of all, for those real techies, are those, do you have some good sources for that?
[00:15:38.180] – Paul
Yeah, that’s a good question. You mentioned some of them, Jen, Dan and Ian mentioned some of them as well. But from a standpoint to get some technical knowledge without really going down into the weeds, there’s some really good blog posts out there. AgeRath (?) has some really good videos and content. SEM Rush, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Moz is another good one that doesn’t get…
[00:16:04.640] – Ken
Yeah Whiteboard Fridays are awesome.
[00:16:06.220] – Paul
Yes they are. Yoast has a really good SEO blog. Backlinko, Brian Dean from Backlinko has some really good things. Others, one called SEO by the Sea, which a lot of people have probably never heard of. But that, that has some really good information. Webmaster World gets a little more technical and from a deep dive technical standpoint, that’s really more related to the tool or platform that you’re using. So like, we use Local Leads IQ, so a lot of the deep technical stuff would be related specifically to that.
[00:16:45.320] – Paul
We use some tools for schema data on the back end of the website, getting into the technical issues with something, like we use Schema Pro. They have technical resources and Google has technical resources, can’t deal with Google without knowing they have technical resources, but a lot of their information, the problem with that is it’s written by engineers for engineers. But if you want a deep technical dive into something, it would be specific to whatever you’re looking for, the platform that you’re using. From a deep technical standpoint.
[00:17:20.390] – Ken
Yeah, there are so many different resources out there, it’s hard to remember all of them and keep track, you know, and whatnot. But Dan I hear you talk a lot about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is kind of an annoyance to me, honestly, because ninety-nine percent of the time when somebody wants to connect with me, it’s because they want to sell to me. And they’re very blatant about the sales. And that’s not why I’m on LinkedIn. I’ll stop editorializing there because it is a really valuable tool for a lot of folks, just doesn’t work for me, so I don’t deal with it. I’d love to know what resources do you rely on and use to help you be efficient and proficient in LinkedIn?
[00:18:00.260] – Dan
It’s funny, as we’re talking about books, one of the things that I think was so influential to me about that very problem that you were talking about is a book called ‘SNAP Selling’ from Jill Konrath. She’s based in Minneapolis, I believe, and she’s one of the foremost people on any kind of sales and new business development for prospects that are time-challenged, like, as in the person you’re talking to is only giving you so much time, how do you make the most of that?
[00:18:30.710] – Dan
I’ll just say this. I can’t imagine a B2B marketer not having LinkedIn. It’s as important for some consumer-facing as Facebook. So there’s no way in the world, I think, that you can be without. But the other thing that, that really helps is, all you got to do is think about how you actually talk to people. Do you ever just go up to them just somewhere at a party and go, hi, I’m so-and-so and I do this and this and this and if you need my phone number, here it is. That’s how you sound on LinkedIn, which is ridiculous. It’s more of a, hey, I thought we would connect, softer sell sort of thing. But the thing I like about Snap Selling at that book is it talks about trigger events, things that have happened with either the person or the company that you can use to make it about them first. And that’s what you got to do on LinkedIn.
[00:19:25.880] – Dan
So, yes, I agree with you, Ken, it’s, those people are out there, but in a way, the silver lining to that is that it makes you stand out when you actually show that you care about that person and you have paid attention to their website and other assets. So that’s what’s going to help you always stand out. So I recommend ‘SNAP Selling’ by Jill Konrath for that purpose. And for LinkedIn stuff, to be honest with you, there’s probably like ten to fifteen people that I’m connected to all the time that I, I just, I just read for what they’re posting, so it always changes, but it’s not a bullet per say, but it’s definitely kind of the people I’m regularly connected to and have the same values and tone and things like that.
[00:20:11.390] – Ken
Yeah, it doesn’t really make any difference what the platform is. Value in advance is always a great strategy. And if you just walk up, like you said, if you did this at a networking event and said, hey, I’m Ken Tucker, I need you to buy a website from me today. Yeah, you’re going to get people run from the hills and you’re going to be the loneliest person in that networking crowd.
[00:20:31.400] – Dan
We were just talking about funnels and we, we talked about all the components of a funnel. But the one thing that is always important to reinforce with people is, we worry so much about building it and then we don’t think about what are you actually going to say? And if you’re going to do an email chain of stuff, well, it’s got to be valuable to them every time. If you have any part of that that says, hey, I’m just bumping this up to, your top of your email, you’re going to be gone like they’re going to put you in the trash can. So that’s where the content element of this is so important.
[00:21:07.620] – Ken
So definitely, Jen, let’s go to you. So what sources do you use for the other popular social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever you guys really work with in regard to your clients or jump in, obviously, if you have something on LinkedIn as well.
[00:21:27.050] – Jen
Absolutely. The best general one I like to go to is Social Media Examiner. So I have been down to one of their conferences, for covid. It’s just very well done. Really good information. It can take you from, if you’re basic, you just heard of a social media platform, you’re really not too sure about it. You can go there and they’ve got the resources to take you from one-on-one all the way up to expert level, all the way up to you, you’re trying to do something with some integrations and they’ll help you there as well. So really good for that. Really focused on your business, whether it’s B2B, B2C, lifestyle business services, and really just practical, practical advice on it. And they keep very, very up to date on all the platforms, to be quite honest. So if there is breaking news or a new feature, you can bet they’re going to let you know first. So I prefer to go there, and then if we’re deep diving, sometimes they have guest bloggers, guests, folks on their podcast that will be an expert in the different channels. So if there’s special ones to you, then I would go ahead and follow that person. But the reason I like to go there first is because they kind of give you an equal opportunity slice about the possibilities in all channels. And I think that’s so important to, we were just having a conversation with a potential client yesterday about this, the love/hate polarization that comes out with social media for some people, it’s mind-boggling. I mean, you don’t see this happen with any other tactic, right? Nobody feels the same about skywriting as they do about social media. You know what I mean? Like, love/hate. I hate Facebook. I love Facebook. And what I caution folks on is, it’s fine in your personal life. However, let’s research. Let’s see who’s really out there, because you could be closing the door on a great channel for your business, whether you like the channel or not.
[00:23:12.200] – Jen
So that’s why I find Social Media Examiner gives you a good cross-section and then you can deep dive into your favorites, or say, you’re new to Pinterest, you’re like, I didn’t know it was so effective. Let me deep dive in there and really find out the information.
[00:23:24.340] – Ken
I’ve done numerous of their summits, their training courses. I do probably at least one or two a year it seems like. Not only is Social Media Examiner a fantastic resource, but the people that they have speaking at those summits, I haven’t been to their in-person events, but they’re all fantastic. And so, it’s my go-to resource, honestly, for social media, especially to get started and then get more into Facebook, for example. Mari Smith is a fantastic resource for that.
[00:23:54.590] – Dan
I’m curious because we were talking about some of these online sources. I’m going to sound like a million years old. Do of you guys remember, like Feedly or Alltop or any of these RSS feed kind of things? I’m, I still use those, but it’s still one of the best ways to just sort of go through these things, because who has the time? So with Social Pilot, which you turned us on to Ken, I’ve noticed that that’s a big thing, where if you’re trying to get any kind of topic update on pretty much anything, with SEO, marketing or whatever, and you have some of these blogs you just put in if they have an RSS feed, it’s been really valuable for keeping up and sharing. And I’ve kind of rediscovered those through Social Pilot.
[00:24:40.520] – Ken
Yeah, no, those are great resources and I think they still exist. They’re underutilized. Used to be a big deal. You wanted to get your blog listed on Alltop, for example, because that was a great SEO strategy ten, fifteen years ago. And I don’t know how great a strategy it is today, I’m sure it can’t hurt, but if you’re trying to find a way to get information about a particular set of topics, going to those aggregators or those curators of that content is a great way to go. Obviously, there’s a lot of noise out there as well. But yeah, for sure.
[00:25:13.750] – Ken
Ian and Paul, I know you guys kind of jump into the world of search engine optimization. I think you guys have previously shared some ideas, like folks from Neil Patel, we’ve talked about Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and places like that. What else do you guys have? Ian, I’ll start with you.
[00:25:30.270] – Ian
Wordstream, I find, an excellent blog on SEO. You mentioned Neil Patel, all of those I entirely agree with Ken. One that I would add, and this is for, especially since we’re talking to probably a lot of local businesses as well, is Michael Blumenthal is a fantastic resource because he is the guru on Google My Business. Not many people know about him if you’re not in the marketing world, but for small businesses out there, he is a fantastic guy to, to follow.
[00:26:02.040] – Ken
Yeah, Stirling Sky as well.
[00:26:03.960] – Ian
Yeah. The only other thing I would add is, Duct Tape Marketing. John Jantsch, fantastic resources related to SEO. But yeah, all of the ones you mentioned, Ken, are excellent. I’m curious to hear what Paul’s going to say.
[00:26:16.260] – Ken
Paul, what do you got?
[00:26:17.310] – Paul
I follow John Mueller a lot from Google. He has some really good insights on how they’re, how Google’s algorithm works. He did an AMA a while back and he was talking about something that when we talk about SEO when ranking websites, he said something you have to remember is, Google doesn’t rank a website, Google ranks web pages. And that’s an important distinction. And if you really start thinking of it in that context, things like Google Analytics start to make a lot more sense, even though you have domain authority. Domain authority isn’t really a Google thing. It is an SEO tool thing, so that it gives you an idea of how your website stacks up against your competitors and it’s all relative. But Heather Lloyd Martin from Success Works is another good one to follow. I really like the information that John Mueller has. Gary Ellis is another one that I follow quite a bit.
[00:27:16.770] – Ken
I like a lot of content from Brightlocal as well. I think they share a lot of really great local SEO information, especially, and one other tool we, we love to use. Local Viking has some fantastic resources.
[00:27:31.870] – Paul
Brightlocal was my answer for the one we haven’t mentioned yet.
[00:27:35.430] – Ken
Sorry.
[00:27:38.240] – Ian
Yeah, I was just going to add that the important thing to remember, like what Paul and I are really answering is that, there are sources that are specifically about SEO out there that are good sources. But the thing to remember but SEO is that, to be good at SEO, you have to be good at a lot of different elements that make up SEO, like from web development to content creation to keyword research. Yeah. So it’s, when I talk about SEO, I’m usually talking about kind of these sources that we’re pulling in, but for a small business owner, you have to, there’s, there’s lots of sources out there that we’ll probably get into in this conversation. But remember that it’s a very cohesive strategy. And so a lot of elements play into it.
[00:28:24.270] – Dan
How many times have we each of us probably been asked, like, I need help with SEO. And then it’s like, yeah, and you also need help with this and this, these are just the things that get uncovered.
[00:28:39.740] – Paul
That’s a good point, Dan. A lot of times people tend to look at these things as silos or as islands, but they all work together. You can’t have a marketing website without getting the technical foundation set first. And even though the client may never see that from a back end perspective or understand what you’re doing, if you don’t have that foundation in place first, nothing else is going to work.
[00:29:07.950] – Ken
Yep. We’ve talked about a lot. I’m sure we fail to mention some. So I want to just kind of circle around and see what you guys think. I’m going to start. Digital Marketer is a great resource for pretty much anything related to digital marketing, whether it’s writing email campaigns, whether it’s doing funnels, you name it. It’s a really great resource. And we haven’t talked a lot about content marketing. So Ian or Dan, is there a particular book…?
[00:29:35.410] – Ian
I’ve got it right here, guys. I will, you know…
[00:29:41.790] – Dan
Shameless plug time…
[00:29:42.750] – Ian
But you know what? This book was made and created by five professionals who wanted to make sure that there was a resource out there for small businesses to understand the importance of content marketing and how it helps them rank higher on Google, and so I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t say that, even though it is a shameless plug.
[00:30:03.700] – Dan
It’s all good, all good.
[00:30:05.800] – Ken
Any other.
[00:30:06.880] – Jen
I was going to say, if you can’t promote on your own podcast. Yes. Good job, guys.
[00:30:12.460] – Dan
I’m going to turn the camera back on the audience here for a moment just because a lot of people out there in our space and beyond who think about their own book that can be written and it’s in their head and they don’t know how to get it out. And as shameless, as long as we’re on the shameless plug, this is not a shameless plug. It’s just what I’ve observed in helping people write business books is that the way that business books are being conveyed out there are constantly changing as far as the size and the format and a lot of different takes.
[00:30:49.510] – Dan
For example, people assume that it has to be one hundred pages, one hundred and fifty pages. It has to be, has to go through a publishing house. It has to do all these things. None of that is true. We’ve seen, for example, one of my favorite sales guys is Jeffrey Gitomer, and his books are like that, like super thin, like little hand, handbooks, but valuable stuff. So, as you think about writing your book, keep in mind it may be a small guide instead, it may be an e-book that it, it comes out to be. Just get it down first and if you need someone, then get it some help. But it does not have to be the traditional book that we have always known and loved.
[00:31:30.670] – Paul
Yeah, there’s a few of, the Google Webmaster Central Blog is a really good blog that doesn’t, coming from Google it actually doesn’t get overly technical and it’s a really good resource. Search Engine Journal actually published a book called ‘SEO 101: Learn The Basics of Search Engine Optimization’, which is really good if you don’t really have an understanding. And then ‘The Art of SEO’ gets a little more in-depth. And that’s, that’s a really good book if you want to learn about a SEO.
[00:32:00.580] – Ken
Jen, you got anything we haven’t covered?
[00:32:02.930] – Jen
I do. I’m going to stick on my general kind of business theme because everybody listening is running a business. And more to the point, everybody running that business is either dealing with, managing with, or having to somehow coordinate people. So one of the podcasts that hasn’t been mentioned yet is called Manager Tools, and it’s actually very, very effective and helpful whether you’re running your own team, whether you’re running a dispersed team, whether you are trying to cobble together freelancers that aren’t super loyal to you, how do you end up doing that? So it’s, it’s a really great podcast for that.
[00:32:37.720] – Ken
Ian, you got anything?
[00:32:39.520] – Ian
The only thing I would add is, I love Content Marketing Institute for content marketing-related stuff, Marketing Profs, PR and, yeah, yeah, excellent. One other, or two other, HubSpot, excellent blogs about marketing and Copy Blogger. Another great one about content.
[00:32:59.590] – Ken
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. For sure.
[00:33:01.480] – Ian
Just to overwhelm our audience with lots of places to go.
[00:33:03.760] – Ken
Yeah. Again this is maybe a little bit of a shameless plug for all of us. This is our job and it’s incumbent upon us to stay up to date with these things. And if you’re a small business owner, you probably should be focusing on doing the things that you do the best. By all means, I always encourage everybody to learn some things about marketing so that people aren’t taking you to the cleaners, so to speak.
[00:33:27.340] – Ken
But at the same time, there’s no way I’m going to be able to stay up to date with the latest nutrition guides to help, or stretching regimens to help somebody keep in shape and be well fed and maintained. You can only do so much. And so that’s why I thought this would be a really fun conversation, different than we’ve done before. And it came to me a little bit in a moment of desperation, it’s like, oh my God, what topic can we do? But, but I think it’s turned out well, so hopefully everybody is going to be able to take away a lot from this conversation today. And hopefully it helps you have a great 2021, or at least as good as you possibly can, because I know we’re still struggling.
[00:34:11.920] – Ken
It’s a great time to really think about your business, in challenging times is the best place and the best time, I think, to really think about how you, can you improve your business, because if your business isn’t really well optimized in the numerous facets, you’re going to be struggling. And so now’s the time to take advantage of that. All right. Thanks, guys.
[00:34:34.540] – Narrator
Thank you. We want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to today’s podcast, please be sure and subscribe to the Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast and your podcast software. We’d love for you to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And please don’t forget to visit marketingguidesforsmall businesses.com for more episodes, free resources and links to set up free consultation calls with any of the hosts of this podcast. Thanks again. And stay tuned.