In a recent blog post Jantsch describes Foursquare as a “location enabled service that allows users to ‘check in’ when they stop at a bar, restaurant, park, bookstore or really anywhere they want to list.”  I’m not sure I want everyone to know where I am, but Jantsch thinks it’s a good idea for small business owners.  Why?  He shares a few good reasons. 

1) Online offline—People are physically checking in to your business and talking about it online in what can turn into a tremendously effective one-two punch.

2) Make offers – On a recent trip to Chicago I checked into my Marriott on Foursquare and immediately received notice that three nearby businesses had a special offer me. I’m always up for a good deal.

3) Track and reward – Foursquare’s gaming functionality allows businesses to create special promotions for mayors and badge earners and in effect setting up a competition among their most loyal fans. You want to promote me to mayor? Count me in!

Jantsch notes that “Foursquare now could hold a significant advantage when and if Foursquare becomes the next Twitter.” I like the idea of a game that helps me save money and helps small businesses.

Are you using Foursquare?  If so, how do you like it and how has it benefited you?

Thanks to marketing guru John Jantch’s post “Creating and Using Web Video Never Easier” there’s hope for me and the new round of videos I’m taping this week. In his detailed post, Jantsch shares reasons for taping videos (more sites are using them). He also includes tips for capturing, editing and distributing videos. 

• Make your videos sharable – add social media links or tools like AddtoAny so people can pass your videos on. It makes sense that more people will be able to pass your videos along if the process is easy.

• Optimize your videos – when you upload a video to a sharing site make sure you use keyword rich titles, descriptions and tags (getting your videos to show up in Google search is a good thing!) If you take the time to write and tape a video, help others find it.

• Optimize the video pages – Search engines aren’t great at knowing what’s in a video (although they are getting there) so make sure you thoroughly describe what your video is about on the page or blog post where it resides on your site. You may want to use an interesting title to create interest for your video but the title may not include your keywords. Include keywords in the description to make it easier for search engines to find your videos.

• Publish your videos on social networks – Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn profiles and Biznik profiles are great places to run some video. Considering that these pages have more text than videos, there’s a better chance your videos will get noticed and maybe even passed along.

How long will your overnight success take?

Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, is also an overnight success after years of hard work. In his video,“What it takes to be an overnight success,” Brogan shows the not-so-glamorous, hardworking side of being successful.

Those folks looking for get-rich-quick schemes and for shortcuts to success, soon find out that those gigs are short-lived. Hard work pays off. Just ask Chris Brogan.

Lead, follow or get your ass out of the way
Another successful business guru, John Jantsch, reveals the “7 traits of the modern leader“ on his site, Duct Tape Marketing. A few of the traits Jantsch describes are:

•Trust themselves. An authentic trust in one’s self allows a leader to make decisions for the right reason and not out of a hidden agenda or attempt to prop up self-worth.

•Embrace change. Well, I guess we’ve all seen what the Internet has done to companies and entire industries unwilling to embrace change – think newspapers? Today’s leader is downright giddy about the speed at which things are happening all around them and in every aspect of their life.

•Keep learning. Today’s teacher understands the speed of change and further understands that in order to have any reason for people to follow, they must provide a sense of what’s next, what’s ahead – the only way to do that is inquire vigorously, every day.