Small Business Trends

From new ways of marketing to shifts in customer information management, gender issues, policy and trends in the marketplace, small business and entrepreneurship are changing as perhaps never before, and may be at their highest point in more than a decade. The Small Business Trends team brings you a snapshot of this evolution as it happens. Get ready for what comes next:

On Marketing

When permission marketing turns sneaky. Small business owner and blogger Pat Henry is a big fan of Seth Godin’s permission marketing concept, so when he heard an entrepreneur talking up something as “permission marketing” that clearly wasn’t, Pat just couldn’t resist. Small Business Community

How do you measure your online marketing results? Actually the title of John Joyce’s post is “Why Aren’t You Measuring The ROI Of Your Online Marketing Efforts?”, but the truth is probably that businesses are simply overwhelmed. John doesn’t share any easy answers but does suggest a place to start. Like finding ways to track your online efforts to see if they are yielding results. The Small BizNest

Quit talking about social media! Hey, it’s not that John Jantsch doesn’t think using tools like Facebook, Twitter etc. are important. It’s only that he’s tired of hearing about them as if they are somehow detatched from marketing and strategy in general. Instead, he’d like to talk about general principals that should apply to ALL marketing. Stuff like customer experience, engagement, collaboration and fusion. Duct Tape Marketing

Facebook

(Because increasingly so many small businesses use Facebook, we’re providing links to coverage of the ongoing privacy controversy and what businesses can learn from this about doing business online)

Despite controversy, Facebook remains strong. Don’t think about suspending your Facebook account or think that the social media giant won’t be an effective method of marketing in the near future. Despite problems, Facebook remains popular. And the company’s troubles may also be a great case study into how businesses can weather any storm if their model is strong enough. Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Lay off Facebook! An impassioned plea from Michael Arrington (not always a Facebook fan as he admits) in the midst of the controversy over Facebook privacy. The fiasco is non-the-less a cautionary tale for leaders in businesses of all sizes, including online small business owners, about the importance of customer data and of being careful what information you release online. TechCrunch

Women In Business

(We’ve been following the back and forth between Chris Brogan and Rieva Lesonsky over the issue of women in business and think it has particular relevance to small business leaders today.)

The conversation started with a post by Chris about women in the workplace. The post is inspired by two articles from the Harvard Business Review suggesting that while women make up 47 percent of college-educated entry-level corporate professionals, they make up a much smaller percentage of executives and board members. But the post is pretty silent on women in entrepreneurship and small business leadership. Chris Brogan

Enter small business expert Rieva Lesonsky who questioned Chris’s assertion. Saying she was “shocked” that Chris had overlooked any number of women entrepreneurs–Lillian Vernon, Estee Lauder, Cisco co-founder Sandy Lerner, Mary Wells Lawrence and, Mary Kay Ash–Lesonsky went on to pull out some stats of her own like the fact that women now own and run 40 percent of the small businesses in the U.S. and the fact that they can still be at a disadvantage when raising capital or getting the attention of VC’s. Small Biz Daily

You can read Chris’ response here. In fairness to both Chris and Rieva, both of whose stuff we follow regularly here at Small Business Trends, we suggest the truth lies somewhere between these arguments. While women still suffer disadvantages, however diminishing, in the corporate world and perhaps even in small business, we suggest fewer have risen to positions of leadership in corporate America because too many are starting and running successful small businesses, the true engines of the economy, and all the better for them. Chris Brogan

(So what do you think? We’d really like to know. Enter your own comments below.)

Policy & Trends

Think the recession is bad for business? Well, think again! The Kuffman Index indicates “entrepreneurial activity” is at its highest rate in 14 years eclipsing even the Dotcom boom. (And this with no government backed small business loans?) The Huffington Post

Anything they can do, we can do better. It may not be surprising to many small business leaders that new “health-care exchanges” proposed under a new health-care reform bill projected to be extremely costly to small business and the economy in general are already being provided in the private sector. What else could entrepreneurs produce, at no cost to tax payers, given a more favorable business climate? National Review Online