John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing has done it again with a great orientation on using Facebook for social marketing, especially for small businesses, non-profit organizations, and ministries.  If you're still on the fence about whether you should have a Facebook presence, read this and call me in the morning.  Not sure how to get started?  I can help you establish a vibrant Facebook presence, where you can connect to both your favorite (and best) customers, as well as new leads that may never have found you any other way.

Facebook continues to grow in popularity with small business to the point where it’s no longer a matter of if you should be utilizing this platform as how. It’s really no surprise to me that Facebook is generally deemed more useful for the small business than other social media tools, such as twitter. The Facebook platform and applications are such that a business could feasibly build their entire web presence there – particularly now that Fan pages can be viewed publicly by non Facebook users. So, the question I want to dive into today is this: What’s the best way to approach Facebook for your business? Of course, I’m not entirely sure there’s one correct answer, so I’ll outline three approaches that might make sense.

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Once in awhile, someone comes along with a marketing insight that is so ingenious in its simplicity it makes you want to scream, "Why have I wasted so much time not doing this?"  It says something, I think, about Seth Godin that he seems to generate a lot of those moments—at least for me.

Sell like you buy... if it's not good enough for you as a consumer, why should it be good enough for you as a marketer?

Do you believe in what you are selling?  Would you buy your product or service?  If not, why are you wasting your time?

And no, you can't fake it.  You really can't.

Business guru John Jantsch (from the outstanding site Duct Tape Marketing) had this to say about what is coming next in the world of web-saavy business:

I think it's time to move beyond the notion that a blog is part of a web site, an appendage of sorts, where blog posting is done. The idea that makes blogs so powerful is that they enable anyone in the organization to easily create education based, search-engine friendly content at the drop of a hat..... fully functioning content management systems (CMS) that give businesses the power to dominate search results through massive content creation, cross purposing, and keyword-rich aggregation and filtering... Content is easily created, stored in a database, delivered to a designated page, tagged, and searchable.... I would like to suggest that a robust, group centric, CMS platform is the next wave for business blogging—but not blogging and "we have a blog"—blogging as a fully integrated web strategy. — from The next wave in business blogging, by John Jantsch

I think John's hit the nail on the head. In fact, what he's describing is the central philosophy of Firewind Productions.

The most risky thing you can do now is be safe. Seth Godin

Marketing genius Seth Godin talks about the new generation of marketing and why the traditional method of aiming for the center of your projected demographic curve, the common denominator of your market base—just won't work anymore. He explains why you need to be remarkable... not necessarily the best, just the most remarkable.

Why design? Why anything? Legendary designer Philippe Stark answers the question in his inimitable way.

Larry Lessig has some very stimulating things to reveal about creativity, intellectual property, and the law.