SnackFest of Small Business Marketing Advice


marketing advice for small businessesJohn Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing put together short “snack size” bits of advice about small business marketing for 2009.  All of the advice is from folks who are active on Twitter, which is currently the rage in social media sites.

The advice is snack size because Twitter only allows messages to be 140 characters in length (about 2 short sentences).  So we all had to limit our advice to 140 characters.

Each person was asked to finish this sentence:  “2009 will be the year for small businesses to . . .”

My favorite response was by Guy Kawasaki, who said: “Stop believing that Wall Street and investment bankers are any smarter than they are.” In other words, rely on yourself. Good advice.

But there’s lots of advice from quite a range of people — from Seth Godin to copyrwriter Bob Bly to bo Burlingham the Editor of Inc Magazine.

Check it out and add your snack size bit of advice in the comments over there: Small Business Marketing Experts for 2009.

8 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

8 Reactions
  1. Hi Anita, thanks for the heads up here. I have a lot of practice pitching ideas to people on Twitter, so i’ll have to go check out John’s post and snack-sized advice!

    But I’ll add some advice here too — let 2009 be the year that we remind the nation how powerful small businesses really are. Not in a bully sort of way, but in a way that demonstrates the importance of the small biz community (online here and offline everywhere).

    Most small biz owners I know have never forgotten how to roll up their sleeves, they remember the community in which they are a part, they encourage young entrepreneurs, and the list goes on. Some very big businesses and the executives within them need to find some new role models and they come from the ranks of small businesses. I continue to find inspiration in the work that you do here Anita and in the posts and comments from the small business experts that participate and care about this community.

    Thanks and Happy New Year!
    TJ

  2. It was nice to see all the tidbits of messages. I am starting to understand the nature of Tweeter and my next exploration will be FriendFeed.

    I agree with Guy Kawasaki that you shouldn’t think that the financial players are smarter than they really are, but on the same time you should value their work. Without a marketplace, you don’t have an exchange of free trade and business at all. I will discuss this issue and other things with Jonathan Hoenig of CapitalistPig LLC in the beginning of the next year. Please state tuned for my new series of podcast interviews! 🙂

  3. Oops! Sorry for the typo in my signature. I called Twitter for tweeter! 😉 Do you tweet yet?! 😉

    Happy New Year!

    All the Best,

    Martin Lindeskog
    http://Twitter.com/Lyceum

  4. “Some very big businesses and the executives within them need to find some new role models and they come from the ranks of small businesses.” I totally agree TJ.

    I’ve yet to use Twitter…in fact, I’ve avoided it, but I may reconsider. Thanks for the information.

    Happy New Year!

    Diane Creston
    http://www.crestonadvertising.com

  5. Everyone provided very interesting responses. I like Andy Sernovitz’s comment best. It’s been a difficult 2008 and I think it’s smart for a business to recognize the value in their existing customers during this next year. The sooner you realize how much power they hold for your business the quicker you can take advantage it.

  6. I like Rich Sloans comment that home based businesses will increase drastically. . .I strongly agree with that as many are unemployed and searching for opportunities. They will turn to the Internet and home based small businesses for sure.

  7. A very happy new year to all.

    There were a lots of interesting snacks.

    A lot of good advice to follow.

    I am liking Twitter even more. 🙂

  8. @Diane Let me share an example I’ve observed: I have a number of top editors and publishers in my network (some in Twitter) and they will sometimes tweet about a story they have coming up and want sources for. While I’m not in the PR business, these sorts of tidbits, tweets, can help my clients so I naturally share them.

    Another expert blogger here at Small Business Trends, Jonathan Fields, posted about how he’d seen success with Twitter. He wrote one of the best posts I’ve seen on the topic – in terms of motivating me to use Twitter more.
    https://smallbiztrends.com/2008/07/get-access-social-media.html/

    Happy Tweets in the New Year.
    TJ