BusinessBloggingBootCamp

Brother Roundtable: Who Says a Slow Economy Has to Slow Down Your Small Business

Who knew that a two month delay would make the topic of helping small businesses thrive in a slow economy even more timely? Back in August, Yvonne and I were invited to speak at a roundtable in New York City entitled "Who Says a Slow Economy Has to Slow Down Your Small Business?" hosted by Brother.

Steve Strauss, USA Today small business columnist, blogger at MrAllBiz.com, and author of The Small Business Bible, moderated the discussion. In addition to Yvonne and me, the panelists were:

• Carmina Perez — Mogulette-in-the-Making
• Bob Phibbs — The Retail Doctor
• Gene Marks — The Marks Group
• Peter Piazza — About.com Guide to Printers & Scanners
• Jay Heyman — All You Need is a Good Idea

I've been waiting for the video to post about the discussion and now that they're here, today's time crunch prevents me from doing anything but posting them. As might be expected, some of the "good stuff" (at least as I perceived it) got left on the cutting room floor. So I'll try to do another post later to fill in some details. But I do think the clips here provide a useful variety of ideas on how small businesses can weather the current economic crisis.

Here's the first clip (follow the link at the bottom to the full post for the others):

Blogs vs. Other Social Media? Businesses Need Both

We all know why Paul Boutin wrote his disingenuous post, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004, claiming that nobody should think about starting a blog and those who have one should "pull the plug." He wants links and traffic. And he'll get them, as folks who are willing to post outrageous nonsense generally do. But on the chance that someone out there might think his advice worth listening to, here's mine: ignore him.

The ironies are so rampant. Boutin signs off claiming to be a "correspondent" for the "gossip site Valleywag." It's a blog. He's just another blogger. He's posting his advice against blogging on, you guessed it, a blog. And the blog is one of a couple of dozen blogs that make up Wired.com.

But let's put aside his blatant traffic-seeking hypocrisy and look at a couple of his arguments. The main one is that the blogosphere is so crowded with professional, big-media bloggers that newcomers or little guys can't get found.

Really?

One of our clients, Dr. Bill Ward a/k/a DR4WARD, started his blog about marketing around Super Bowl weekend this year. I just did a quick check of his traffic today and someone came from a Google search for the terms "budweiser commercial dalmation appeal emotion" (without the quotes) and Bill's blog was # 6 on the first page (click on the image to enlarge). Ahead of Budweiser's own site. Ahead of any mainstream media. In fact, six of the top seven results are identifiable as blogs reviewing the Super Bowl ads.

Want to get found quickly: Get blogging!

Warren Buffett's Investing (in Social Media) Advice

I've been accumulating a stack of somewhat related posts and articles over the past few months revolving around topics like the business value of social media, engagement, and measurement, metrics, or whatever term you prefer. There's way too much bubbling in my head to cover in one post, but I'm going to start with some of the recent fretting over "measurement" — since that's what connected me with Warren Buffett's advice this morning.

Let's start with these bits from his Op-Ed piece in today's NY Times:

A simple rule dictates my buying: ... [buy] when others are fearful.

... if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

Yeah, yeah ... I know Warren wasn't talking about investing in social media. But his rationale applies, nonetheless.

We continue to hear business people from organizations large and small express fear about investing their time and/or money in blogging and other social media. "The lawyers won't let us, because somebody might leave a negative comment." "The C-level execs demand 'measurable' ROI." "What if I can't keep up with writing 2-3 posts a week?"

Recognize the fear?

What would Warren do?