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Marketing podcast with Michael Hyatt (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)

Every individual, whether business owner or employee, needs to understand the benefits of building a platform.

The term platform has often been applied in the publishing world to the reach or audience an author has.

Today, we’re all publishers, or at least we can be, and standing out in the crowd by using a strategic approach to building a platform is as equally important to a 22 yr old starting a career as it is to a seasoned consultant launching a new venture.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Michael Hyatt, He is the Chairman and former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and he writes and extremely popular blog at michaelhyatt.com.

Hyatt embraced blogging very early on as a way to communicate with his organization and has turned this notion into one of the most followed blogs online. Even though Hyatt was considered a successful business person at the time, he effectively built a platform that extended his reach far beyond his role as CEO, aided the reach of his organization and opened the door to the creation of his own books and products.

Hyatt took many of his blog posts and assembled them in the book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

The book is a thorough primer in the art of building a platform using many of today’s online tools. If you’ve read and followed the likes of Chris Brogan, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, or Jason Falls or if you’ve been blogging yourself for some time and are a fan of Copyblogger or ProBlogger, you won’t find much in the way of revelations, but the book does a nice job of mapping out Hyatt’s road to building a platform.