I happen to think that many small business folks would find networking on the web as valuable as networking at, say, the next Chamber event. There are many ways to do networking on the web but I happen to think one of the easiest is to participate in blogs you enjoy by frequently posting relevant content. Blog comment posting is very much like standing around chatting with a group of folks at a networking event (except you don’t have to balance the Swedish meatball plate on your wine glass.)

When you target blogs you enjoy reading and bloggers you would like to have a relationship with and participate appropriately in the conversation you will find that your writing improves, you gain access to thought leaders and you will likely receive the benefit of spillover traffic from some of the blogs where you leave comments. (Don’t post sales pitches and direct links to your site - the blogging software will point to your site much like a business card, let it do the work of linking)

Now, here’s a tip to make your commenting task go a bit easier. WordPress and TypePad, the two big blog softwares automatically throw off RSS feeds for comments as well as content. You can subscribe to the comment feed of any blog you follow and automatically get new comments in your RSS reader so that you can react to the ones that need your input.

Here’s the URL for mine and the format for any WorpPress blog - http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/comments/feed/

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10:10:20 PM    

Jim Blasingame is the creator and award-winning host of the Small Business Advocate® Show, a weekday radio talk show dedicated to small business. He is one of the pioneers in terms of experts dedicated to small business.

A few months ago he created a unique search engine called AskJim. Now, AskJim isn’t so much a search engine like Google as it is an answer engine. If you have a small business question you can enter it into the search box and the results will come from the archive of small business answers provided by what Jim calls his BrainTrust (experts in assorted fields of business.)

It’s an interesting module and one that many small business owners may find much more useful than the typical Google or Yahoo search.

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10:10:18 PM    

I visited with Lesa King, editor of the Graphic Reporter, author the Lynda.com training series - Graphic Secrets for Business Professionals and chief evangelist for iStockphoto for a recent edition of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast.

Lesa gave the Duct Tape Marketing Coach network a guided tour of iStockphoto at my annual gathering of coaches. For those of you who may not know about iStockphoto, you simply must. If you use images, illustrations and video clips in your marketing, this is a gold mine. Great, royalty free stock photos, that are easy to find and inexpensive.

Some of my favorite tips and tricks Lesa shared had to do with ways to find great photos.
• Do a search and look deeper into the results to find great photos that might not be used by as many folks
• Search by color to find photos that possess a great deal of a color that better compliments your designs
• Search by CopySpace to find photos that are composed in a way that lets you add type to certain areas
• Filter search for shots with people, for orientation and price.

iStockphoto is also a big supporter of Duct Tape Marketing and is offering my readers 10 free credits (good for 5-10 stock photos)

Just send Lesa an email at lesa@iStockphoto.com and ask her for the special Duct Tape 10 code.

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1:00:04 AM