Quick post for a Friday: John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing recently did a conference call with Chris Brogan on using Twitter for business, and has posted the audio online. Listen in-page or download the MP3.

Two very smart men conducting one very smart phone call… What’s not to love?

I regularly read a blog that focuses on different business challenges specific to freelance creatives.

Today I came across a post with more general relevance.

“6 Simple Ways to Promote Your Online Business Offline” could just as easily be called “6 Golden Rules of Marketing Yourself”:

1. Introductions
2. Friends and family
3. Business cards
4. Advertise
5. Join a group
6. Direct mail

Common sense stuff, but Laura Spencer, the post’s author has a way with words and makes a good read.

More on how to use Twitter for business, this time from BusinessWeek.

“A growing number of companies are keeping track of what’s said about their brands on Twitter. Comcast, Dell, General Motors, H&R Block, Kodak, and Whole Foods Market are among a handful of companies [using] Twitter to do everything from burnish brands to provide customer service.”

The magazine also profiles 18 CEOs using Twitter, the applicable to your business being Johnathan Schwartz, Chief Executive at Sun Microsystems:

“Communication is a key part of leadership—as CEO, I need to engage the market, inside and outside Sun, with whatever technology affords me the greatest possible reach. Through blogs, online news, social networking sites, or Twitter, the Internet has fundamentally changed how we communicate with one another. Today, we have thousands of employees participating, engaging customers and developers across the world, 24 hours a day. And whether it’s via a half-hour streaming video or a 140-character Tweet, we need to reach everyone in the forum and format they choose—not what we choose.”

Schwartz says a lot in a short paragraph, but you could do much worse than to model your social media strategy on his outline.

I’m often asked about Twitter and whether it’s “any good” for business.

Actually, to be honest, I’m just as frequently asked about what the hell Twitter is in the first place.

Here’s the crash course from Wikipedia:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Anyway, when asked, my short answer is ususally “It’s as good as you want to make it; if you have the time and energy to dedicate to using social media tools like Twitter, then go crazy.”

But that answer is usually followed by another question: “Yeah, but what do you do with it? What’s the point?”

Here’s the point — anything that fosters weak ties is a good thing.

For example, imagine this scenario:

1. A potential customer visits your blog and sees an invitation to follow you on Twitter.
2. She uses Twitter herself, so she clicks the link and checks out your feed.
3. She likes what you have to say and decides to follow you. Now she can stay up-to-date on everything you tweet.
4. Three months later you happen to tweet “Just finished helping Customer X with Problem Y.”
5. She reads the tweet and sits up in her seat. “I’m having Problem Y right now!”
6. She heads back to your site, using the link you’ve added to your Twitter profile and calls you. Twitter’s value suddenly hits home.

Convinced yet? Here’s more on using Twitter as a tool and how to pick up more followers from Guy Kawasaki.

And incidentally, you can follow my tweets at http://www.twitter.com/aaronwrixon

Pamela Slim writes about a challenge many consultants face — finding a balance between giving away too much and too little information. On one hand, offering lots of free information products as a marketing tactic can establish your reputation as an expert and lead to more sales; on the other, doing so can often feel like you’re “giving away the store.”

Fortunately, in “How to strike a balance between giving content away for free and earning a living,” she lays out a step-by-step action plan for doing just that.

1. Find your passion. “The key here is that you must find something that you care enough about to devote a substantial amount of time thinking and writing about it, and you must have a hunch that there are real, live humans somewhere on the planet who have enough dollars or euros or rupees or pesos to pay for it.”
2. Identify your target market. “When you create a really clear picture of the kinds of people that you would love to work with, it makes it much easier to decide what kind of content to develop for them.”
3. Plan out your content. “Good content can be re-purposed, repackaged, enhanced, digitized and/or turned into a book or workshop or presentation. When you share great information freely with the right people, it becomes your research, marketing copy, sales collateral and branding material.”
4. Choose your vehicle — blog, podcast, newsletter, etc. “The way to choose your best vehicle(s) is to think about the consuming habits of your People. Do they spend a lot of time on the internet? If so, a blog may be the answer. Do they own iPods and commute long distances on public transportation? Podcasts may do the trick. ”
5. Lay the groundwork for sales. “Once you build a list of subscribers, feed them with good stuff, nurture them, ask their opinions and be of service. Just don’t become the internet version of a jewelry salesperson on the beaches of Acapulco.”
6. Ask for the order. “Don’t be embarrassed to tell people what you sell! If you have been delivering good content over an extended period of time, most people will be more than happy to support and promote your business as thanks for all the great stuff that you provide for free.”

And finally, she repeats a formula favored by Robert Middleton, another marketer I regularly read: give away 80% of your information and charge extra for the remaining 20%.

Not necessarily a magic number — you may find you’re comfortable with giving away less — but it’s hard to argue with the experts.