ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Sometimes when you notice a name or concept that's new to you, it starts popping up everywhere. The last two weeks, the clustering I couldn't avoid was contests for smaller businesses. This week, it's John Jantsch, the Duct Tape Marketing maven himself.

Signs of a Jantsch snowball, a tipping point if you will, at least in my inbox:

This week, Jantsch was at the Microsoft Small Business Summit, where he delivered the kickoff keynote on low-cost, high-yield marketing strategies. In the spirit of his duct-tape concept, he promoted the event on his own blog with multiple posts, including a primer on how to get the most out of the four-day event.

He's also speaking at Vision to Venture Conference Series. The first of the five events is next month, but the announcement arrived this week so it counts toward the cluster effect. At these events for women entrepreneurs held in April and May in St. Louis, San Diego, Miami, Austin, and Seattle (also sponsored by Microsoft -- trend alert there), Jantsch will be talking marketing plans and branding strategy.

And then, Jantsch pops up right here on bMighty with a story about making the most of the Web to promote smaller businesses.

Earlier this month he keynoted the Infusion CRM 2008 User Conference in Scottsdale, AZ, addressing marketing strategy for smaller business budgets and using social media tools for brand awareness.

In May, he's headlining Corporate College East's eMarketing for Entrepreneurs Conference in greater Cleveland.

You get the point. He's blogging. He's writing books. He's coaching. He's on YouTube. He's got a community network (The Workbench for Small Business Marketers). He's everywhere. He's collecting frequent flyer miles at sprint pace. He's an online star. He puts butts in seats. He's got his own That "presence" has earned him comparisons to Karl Rove -- referring to his strategy chops, not his politics. And it's all about small business.