3 Reasons for Small Businesses to Engage in Social Media

According to Small Business Success Index, cited by Entrepreneur Magazine, small businesses reported the following results from being engaged in social media:

• 59 percent Identifying and attracting new customers 
• 61 percent Developing a higher awareness of the business in a market 
• 63 percent Staying engaged with customers

Some pretty good reasons. They appeared in a sidebar to Chris Brogan's regular column in Entrepreneur.

Small Business May be the Engine of the US Economy But Not According to Bloomberg & Time Warner

First casualty of 2010: the demise of BusinessWeek SmallBiz. According to a post card, SmallBiz's last issue was Dec. 09/Jan. 2010. This development follows closely the demise of Fortune Small Business (FSB).

Survivors include Inc. and Entrepreneur.

It's been commonly acknowledged that small business is the engine of the US economy. But not enough advertisers seem to believe that. Clearly there's not enough support for standalone publications directed at small businesses, at least according to billion-dollar publishers Time Warner and Bloomberg.

Of course, both Fortune and Bloomberg BusinessWeek said they will continue to maintain their respective small business web sites and will now integrate small business coverage into their main print publications. That means there will be less content for and about small business. What was particularly helpful about FSB and BusinessWeek SmallBiz is that they provided service journalism: articles that not only reported on current trends (which will likely continue) but also how-to articles, and it's the latter type of article that won't be included in Fortune and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

That's a shame because small business owners are time starved but craving information geared just for them. The daily papers can't cover small businesses too closely; the Wall St. Journal and New York Times allocate a page -- about a story or two -- each week.

Of course, there's still Inc. & Entrepreneur. I hope they can pick up the advertising dollars left on the table after the demise of their competitors.

Marketing Tips from American Express -- Do they make sense for today's economy?

In an interview in BtoBObline, Marcy Shinder, VP of Brand Strategy and Marketing at American Express OPEN, offered up these tips (in a different format):

• A downturn is a good time to identify ways to transform a company.
• A lot of companies look at delivering better customer service as a differentiator. (For service organizations, this can be a challenge since your competitors are likely to be trying the same things. Instead, think about what improvements would deliver the most value.)
  
• Companies need to stay relevant. (In other words, think about the problems customers buy from you, and make sure that what you provide truly solves their problems.)
• Provide tangible value. (We have a client with a fascinating vision of the future of technology in their sector, but we've advised them to make that game-changing vision a secondary message because their first goal is to sell product. So they need to focus on ways they provide real value to their customers. A compelling vision of what's to come is good, but that doesn't always help customers when deciding to buy now instead of putting off the purchase for later.)
• Companies need to market differently from the day of the 30-second spot. They need to provide insight, inspiration and advice during every customer interaction.
  
• Companies need to answer what they can do for their customers.

Some good common sense advice, yet I'd bet a lot of companies don't follow up on this. Check out the complete article, "American Express' Shinder on marketing to small businesses," and let me know what you think. Do these tips makes sense? Will following them make a difference to customers and bring in new or incremental business?