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Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

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You don't have to be a marketing guru to achieve small business success. With the right tools, marketing can be made easy. To help you cut through the clutter, we examined EIGHT of the most credible thought leaders in the social media and marketing universe. In this new white paper, you'll discover all the must-have resources suggested by the industry's leading experts. Download today and find out what exists in the toolboxes of Seth Godin, Jeff Bullas, Danny Sullivan, and more.
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© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466
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Page 1: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Page 2: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

8 Thought Leaders and Their Secret Weapons!

1  

Jim Kukral!@JimKukral!

Seth Godin!@ThisIsSethsBlog!

Jeff Bullas!@JeffBullas!

Jay Baer!@jaybaer!

Chris Voss!@CHRISVOSS!

Danny Sullivan!@dannysullivan!

Christopher Penn!@cspenn!

Robert Scoble!@Scobleizer!

Page 3!

Page 4!

Page 5!

Page 6!

Page 7!

Page 8!

Page 9!

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Page 3: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

8 Thought Leaders and Their Secret Weapons!

One of the biggest challenges for businesses is staying on top of the rapidly

changing marketing and media landscape. Countless apps, websites, and blogs compete

for our attention – there's something new, it seems, every day.!

!

To help you cut through the clutter, we examined EIGHT of the most credible and

dynamic thought leaders in the social media and marketing universe.!

!

We asked ourselves the following questions:!

•  What are their go-to marketing

resources? !

•  What tools do they recommend to their

legions of followers? !

•  What applications helped them get to

where they are now?!

•  What tips and tricks could any small business use to immediately boost

their marketing campaigns?!

!

!

!

!

!

In the pages that follow, you will find a number of gems; if just one inspires you to take your

marketing to the next level, then we are doing our job.!

!

We challenge you to utilize these invaluable

marketing resources to immediately improve your marketing campaigns.!

2  

Page 4: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Jim Kukral!

Jim Kukral, a columnist with The Huffington Post, is smart and goes out of his way to be

helpful. Dun & Bradstreet named him one of “The Most Influential Small Business People

on Twitter,” and he serves as an Online Instructor for the University of San Francisco’s

Internet Marketing Program.!

!

!

!

!

!

!

Not to worry – the company says implementation takes about 15 seconds, “even for newbies.”

LeadPlayer claims to be “the easiest way to attract an audience, build a list, and generate

revenue.” A pretty bold claim, right? Reading the reviews, it appears they can walk the talk.!

!

For landing pages, Kukral suggests Unbounce, which enables users to build,

publish and pre-test landing pages – all without an IT department. !

!

!

!

“Love this tool for building fantastic, awesome

looking landing pages,” he says.!

!

Users can build a landing page and publish it to the web in a single click and without any

knowledge of HTML.!

!

Businesses that count on Unbounce to facilitate

conversions include Canon, Intuit, Greenpeace, Amazon, and LinkedIn.!

!

!

!

!

!

Kukral is a big fan of the LeadPlayer WordPress Plugin, which

provides easy opt-in boxes that appear at the beginning of a video. It also offers the ability to

insert call-to-actions into videos. Think it's beyond your technical aptitude?!

Jim Kukral!@JimKukral!

3  

Page 5: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Seth Godin!

Seth Godin is the author of 17 books that have been best sellers around the world and

have been translated into more than 35 languages. His blog is one of the most popular

in the world. Godin was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo! and in 2013, he

was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of

Fame.!

!

Recently, Godin shared his favorite online tools, some of which are well known and

others that may surprise you. Have you heard, for example, of duckduckgo.com? If you

care about your privacy, maybe you should. !

!

Godin describes it as “a smart, fast, private

search engine with a silly name.” It prides itself not only on protecting searchers' privacy, but in

providing the highest quality search results culled from key crowd-sourced sites.!

!

Searching for a blog post image is one of the most frustrating and time-consuming parts of

blogging. Godin regards Compfight, an image search engine, as “a secret weapon in the

search for useful Creative Commons-licensed photos.” The search engine also includes photos

available for commercial use. Godin reminds

users to donate if they use the service. !

!

Then there’s FeedBlitz, an email and social media marketing automation service. It

manages subscriptions, circulation tracking, testing, and is compatible with all major

blogging platforms and services.!

!

!

Godin describes FeedBlitz as “a reliable, handmade alternative to Feedburner and other

corporate solutions.” FeedBlitz handles the email and RSS feeds for his highly regarded blog.!

!

!

Seth Godin!@ThisIsSethsBlog!

4  

Page 6: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Jeff Bullas!

Jeff Bullas was listed by Forbes as one of the "Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers" in

2013, and has been cited as a social media expert in the New York Times and the

Huffington Post. He is a fan of Aweber, an email marketing software designed to be

efficient and easy to use. !

!

Bullas, who uses AWeber for his blog, says

he is impressed by its “large range of features that can be used by affiliate

marketers, bloggers and website owners.” !

!

Key features include email newsletters, autoresponders, and converting RSS to email. !

A dizzying number of marketing blogs beckon

us. What is on Bullas' reading list? The one constant over the years, he says, has been

Copyblogger, which started as a copywriting blog but has evolved.!

!

“It is a great portal for content marketing, SEO

copywriting, email marketing, keyword research and internet marketing in general,”

says Bullas. For SEO, he has two rulebooks he

consults on a regular basis: Search Engine Journal and

Search Engine Land.!

!

!

!

For lead generation and inbound marketing, he, along with nearly 10,000 other marketers,

counts on Hubspot, which Bullas credits with inspiring him to start his highly rated social

media marketing blog.!

!

New social media tools and platforms are launched every year. Bullas reminds us that the

old kid on the block, Facebook, remains the

largest social network on the planet. He recommends ShortStack, an app that allows

non-programmer types to customize their Facebook pages.!

!

Want another recommendation? Try MailChimp, which, according to Bullas, is “an

easy to use email marketing platform that is cost effective and easy to get up and running

fast.” !

!

!

!

!

Jeff Bullas!@JeffBullas!

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Page 7: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Jay Baer!

Baer has worked with hundreds of brands including Nike, Cold Stone Creamery, and

Sony. He is the co-author of, “The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business

Faster, Smarter, and More Social.”!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

!

Baer uses the All In One SEO Pack plug-in, calling it ‘a must’ to optimize posts for search

engine rankings. “This nifty piece of software,” says Baer, “allows you to specify page title,

description, and keywords for each post.” Seems to be working for Baer's blog, Convince &

Convert, which was named the number-three

social media blog in the world by Social Media Examiner. !

!

One of Baer's newest obsessions is Topsy, a

real-time search engine that he describes as “one part virality tool, one part tracking

mechanism, one part social listening post.” !

!

!

Topsy indexes and ranks search results based on what influencers are saying about a given

topic, at a given time. “I’ve moved from TweetMeme to Topsy on my embedded

tweeting, due to improved metrics, and Topsy’s competitive intelligence capabilities are

impressive,” he says.!

!

And what is Baer's recommendation for your

business? Find a tweet your competitor sent, then use Topsy to see how many times it was

retweeted, by whom, and their degree of influence. “It works like bit.ly, but incorporates all

URL shorteners into the data mix. !

!

!

!

!

!

Enter Tweetdeck, a web tool that helps

you stay on top of it all. Jay Baer primarily uses it for more serious Twitter sessions

and regards it as “an especially valuable and hassle-free” way to update Twitter,

Facebook, and LinkedIn simultaneously.!

!

He also relies on the Twitter app, Objective

Marketer, for in-advance Tweets and test-marketing headlines.!

Jay Baer!@jaybaer!

6  

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Page 8: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Chris Voss!

A top business consultant in marketing and social media, Chris Voss was ranked 18th by

Forbes in its survey of Social Media Influencers. He has been a CEO and

entrepreneur for over 25 years, building and managing a multitude of corporations. Chris

Voss currently acts as consultant, speaker,

blogger, and technology evangelist.!

!

While Jay Baer aligns with TweetDeck, Voss gives some love to HootSuite, its

chief competitor in the social media dashboard marketplace. HootSuite can be

integrated with all major social media

platforms.!

!

!

This social media management system

allows you to post, monitor, and analyze all your social posts in one centralized web

dashboard. !

!

!

!

!

!

!

HootSuite allows companies to:!

•  Schedule posts across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and a treasure trove of other social media apps!

•  Analyze performance with custom reports!

•  Reach targeted audiences!

•  Discover and grow your current audience!

•  Collaborate and streamline team assignments!

!

Seesmic was the other big player, but HootSuite bought them out in late 2012. Voss also uses

Tweetdeck. “On my iPad I use Twitterific and on

my iPhone I use Twittelator. Love them both and I’ve tried all the major Apps,” he says. !

Chris Voss!@CHRISVOSS!

7  

Page 9: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Danny Sullivan!

Widely considered a leading "search engine guru“, Danny Sullivan has been helping webmasters,

marketers, and consumers understand how search

engines work for nearly 20 years. Top-tier media,

including the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Forbes,

the New Yorker and Newsweek, regularly quote his take on the art and science of SEO.!

!

In Sullivan's toolkit you will find the slick and ever thinner Lenovo Yoga, an Ultrabook-class

convertible device that can be used as both a

tablet and laptop computer. The most recent version, launched in 2013, is the Yoga 2 Pro,

thinner and lighter than its predecessors and with a

backlit keyboard.!

!

!!

!

!

Dan Ackerman of CNET wrote, "I'm pleased to see a backlit keyboard, and in our brief hands-on time with

the Yoga 2, it felt like a nice upgrade from the

previous version, and it's still one of the slickest-

looking ultrabooks out there.”!

!Another part of Sullivan's social media arsenal is a pocket video camera, the Sony Bloggie. !!

!

Most pocket video cameras resemble mobile phones in shape and size, and enable businesses to digitally

record anything at a moment's notice. !

!

Video quality is typically higher than multimedia

phones, which is a crucial feature to meet the

demands of content marketers. According to comScore, 8.2 million people in the

U.S. watched 52.4 billion online content videos in

December 2013. And in response, marketers are

quickly devoting more and more time to high-quality

video content.!

!

In the age of YouTube, blogging, and podcasting, a pocket video camera is a must for any business

engaged in social media and public relations.!

!

!

Danny Sullivan!@dannysullivan!

8  

Page 10: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Christopher Penn!

Penn has been featured in many books and in publications such as the Wall Street Journal,

Washington Post, New York Times, BusinessWeek,

and on television networks such as PBS, CNN, and

FOX. In 2012, Forbes Magazine recognized him as

one of the Top 50 Most Influential People in Social Media.!

!

According to Penn, one of the greatest gaps he's seen in small and large businesses alike is the

absence of CRM, or customer relationship

management systems. !

!

CRM benefits include: connecting with customers, managing existing clients, seeking new business

opportunities, and support and service issues.!

!

When it is so easy and affordable to capture

customer data, there is no excuse not to deploy a

CRM system. Price isn’t an issue, says Penn.

“There are free and low cost systems out there with

80 to 90 percent of the functionality of the top end systems.”!

!

!

!

Penn has used the following CRM systems:!

!

Salesforce.com!

“Salesforce offers an incredible amount of

power, but that power comes at a price,” he says. For starters, it's not cheap. And once you set it

up, “it requires extensive configuration and

expertise to make it sing.” Once it's singing,

Penn says, you will find that “Salesforce can

make a huge improvement on your business profitability.”!

!

!

Zoho!

Zoho is a good mid-range CRM option. Penn speculates that users get 80 percent of Salesforce's

capabilities at 5 percent of the price. Zoho requires

configuration time too, but integration with other services is tolerable. His conclusion? “For the small

business, Zoho is probably the best choice.” !

!

Sugar CRM!

Penn describes Sugar as “an open-source Salesforce clone that is usually about 1-2 releases

behind Salesforce.” Not quite a raving endorsement,

yet the price is right. It's free, but Penn cautions

users that, just to have it installed, they'll need a very

competent developer and systems administrator. “If you lack the skills, pay the money for a hosted

service like Salesforce or Zoho,” he says.!

!

!

!

!

Christopher Penn!@cspenn!

9  

Page 11: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Robert Scoble!

Robert Scoble is a technology evangelist and blogger best known for his blog, Scobleizer,

which came to prominence during his time at Microsoft. The Economist once described him

as “a minor celebrity among geeks worldwide, who read his blog religiously.” He previously

worked for Fast Company as a video blogger.

He is well-qualified, then, to undertake his most recent inquiry – testing out Google Glass,

to which he's devoted hundreds of hours.!

!

“I continue to be amazed with the camera,”

says Scoble. “It totally changes photography and video...This is the most

interesting new product since the iPhone and I don't say that lightly.”!

!

The heightened media interest in Google

Glass, a wearable computer with a head-

mounted display, has focused on the consumer market, but there are business applications,

too.!

!

Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner, says mobile workers are among those who will

benefit from Glass. She points out that hands-

free communication with a camera can be very powerful, especially “for busy people on their

feet that need to make things come together.”!

Field service technicians in industries such as oil and gas, healthcare and manufacturing could

use Glass to diagnose an equipment problem. "Instead of paying experts and flying them all

over the world, you have staff that connects with remote experts," says Brent Blum, manager of

digital experiences at Accenture Technology

Labs.!!

Fads come and go. Scoble insists Google Glass is a game changer. !

!

!“I have been telling people that this reminds me

of the Apple II,” he says, recalling the day back

in 1977, that he unboxed it with his dad. The fact that it was expensive and didn't actually do

much didn't seem to matter. “I knew my life had changed in a big way and would just get better

and better,” he says.!

!

Robert Scoble!@Scobleizer!

10  

Page 12: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Summation!

You don’t need to be a marketing specialist to achieve small business success. Simply

do as the experts do. If you’re looking to revive your marketing strategy or effectively

reach new customers, use these tools recommended by marketing’s finest.

They’ve done the research and fieldwork so

you don’t have to. !

!

Before you leave, be sure to check out the secret marketing weapons recommended

by the team here at Business.com.!

11  

!Social Media Management

Systems !

!Social

Monitoring Tools !

!Blogging !

Tools !

!Buffer App!

!Topsy!

!Hubspot’s

Blog Templates!

!Hootsuite!

!Mention!

!ProBlogger!

!SocialBro!

!Crowdbooster!

!Tweak Your

Biz Title Generator!

!SocialOomph!

!Click to Tweet!

Business.com’s Secret Marketing Weapons!

Page 13: Secret Marketing Weapons of 8 Thought Leaders- Business.com eBook

© Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466!

Tools and Appsfrom Marketing’s Best!Thanks and come back soon.!


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