Exceptional Authors Recommended by Gail @GrowMap: @MECLABS @MktgExperiments @MarketingSherpa @GeneMarks @cfishman #smallbusiness

Increase Sales by Learning from Authors with SMB Experience

We all get so busy it can be hard to keep up with the firehose of content being published today. The more exceptional bloggers you meet, the harder that becomes.

I am sharing these specific authors with my readers because they are too important for you to miss. Learning from those who have real world experience increasing small business sales is the fastest way to increase your own revenue.

Please make the time to check them out and consider subscribing or buying their books.

MECLabs, MarketingSherpa, Marketing Experiments

Daniel Burstein, David Kirkpatrick, and the and the rest of the researchers and writers at MECLabs who publish MarketingSherpa and Marketing Experiments provide invaluable case studies and research applicable to small businesses.

They recently published MarketingSherpa blog posts prompted by research from AWeber, which found 68% of small businesses plan on increasing the marketing budget in 2013.

That prompted them to reach out to experts in the SMB sector for tips and tactics specific for SMB marketers which are found in these two posts:

• 2013 Small Business Marketing, Part 1: Rick Jensen, Senior Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Constant Contact, provided his thoughts on where SMB marketers should focus their efforts in 2013.
• 2013 SMB Mktg, Pt 2: Insights from AWeber Research and Hunter Boyle, Senior Business Development Manager and myself (Gail Gardner, GrowMap.com).

Email Marketing is Critical for Small Businesses

As Hunter Boyle of AWeber wrote and I strongly agree:

“Email is the Small Business marketing foundation”

In 2013, we must all learn more effective email marketing. Many of us are currently learning to use FeedBlitz as an RSS replacement for FeedBurner integrated with both social media marketing and email marketing.

FeedBlitz provides many resources for learning their powerful solutions, and as we learn more from FeedBlitz Expert Rebecca Caroe and FeedBlitz Community Manager Heather Solos we will be sharing how-to tips and mentoring others in how to use it. Visit her Creative Agency Secrets blog for FeedBlitz tips.

Other bloggers already use AWeber as they are the #1 recommended email marketing solution for small businesses. I encourage all bloggers to read Kristi Hines’ post Why Your Blog Needs a Mailing List.

If you have a business of any kind, email marketing is too important to ignore.
Those who struggle to do it themselves must hire someone to assist them!

Gene Marks, columnist, author, and small business owner

Click Image for more on Gene Marks

Gene Marks writes about “what’s affecting him, his clients and small business” for The NY Times. His weekly roundups called “This Week in Small Business” are an excellent way for busy people to get a full recap of the best content that affects them.

They’re so good I offer here some of his more recent posts so you can easily find them:

• This Week In Small Business: 1,000 New Bankers
• This Week in Small Business: Facebook Search
• This Week in Small Business: Nothing Magical?
• Drilling Down: Andrew Sullivan Decides to Start His Own Business (Blogging Related)
• This Week In Small Business: YOLO!
• This Year in Small Business: Not Impressed!

Marks also writes for The Huffington Post; Forbes, Fox Business and appears on FOX Business, FOX News, Bloomberg, CNBC, MSNBC’s “Your Business” program, speaks live, and is the author of five books on Small Business Management.

Charles Fishman, award-winning investigative and magazine journalist, book author

Click image for his latest book

An entire course in investigative journalism could be given around the post The Insourcing Boom published in The Atlantic. Journalists and bloggers wishing to hone their skills and anyone interested in how manufacturing has changed in the U.S. – which often applies around the world as well – should read this post.

As all insightful writing that offers new ideas does, that post inspired a rebuttal Alan Tonelson: ‘The Insourcing Boom That Isn’t’. Those who understand how multi-national corporations pit one country’s work force against another (or even within a country) know, they are both correct because that goal can be achieved in many ways.

Fishman’s post is replete with connections worth pursuing. Besides this great debate he started, he is know as the author of the book The Big Thurst; The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water.

He also wrote the New York Times bestseller The Wal-Mart Effect, named by the Economist “book of the year”. My regular readers know I have published similar research in Kaufman, Texas; Still Thriving Because Wal-Mart Did NOT Come to Town – Yet.

(Yes, this is the same small town Kaufman (outside Dallas) where the Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney was shot and killed by two Kevlar wearing gunman early this morning. )

TWITTER ACCOUNTS

Image Credit: In Good Company

To make it easier to connect with those recommended in this post, here are their Twitter usernames. (If there are others let me know and I’ll add them.)

MECLABS TWITTER ACCOUNTS:

• Daniel Burstein @DanielBurstein
• David Kirkpatrick @davidkonline
• MECLABS @MECLABS
• MarketingSherpa @MarketingSherpa
• Marketing Experiments @MktgExperiments

EMAIL MARKETING TWITTER ACCOUNTS:

• FeedBlitz @FeedBlitz
• FeedBlitz Founder Phil Hollows @phollows
• FeedBlitz Consultant Rebecca Caroe @rebeccacaroe
• FeedBlitz Community Manager Heather Solos @heathersolos
• Aweber @aweber
• Constant Contact @ConstantContact
• Rick Jensen, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Contstant Contact @jensenrickw

 SMALL BUSINESS AUTHOR’S TWITTER ACCOUNTS:

• Gene Marks @GeneMarks
• Charles Fishman @cfishman

I encourage my readers to at least consider subscribing to these writers – especially if you are in small business or are a blogger who understand the importance of small businesses to our economies worldwide.

Tomorrow I will share the most important posts I’ve written lately about how bloggers need to step up and assist small businesses with their marketing and social media.

RELATED SMALL BUSINESS POSTS:

• Top Small Business Books – My Picks for SmallBizTrends 2012 #BizBookAwards
• Small Business Priorities for 2013
• WARNING to Small Businesses Targeting Affluent Markets
• 2013 Predictions: B2B Will Finally Stop Ignoring 80% of Small Business

If you want to read all of my posts almost everywhere I write, I am working on aggregating the feeds to make that easier. Use these links and as I get each feed added it will automatically show up in your email or RSS.

• RSS, email or via social networks: http://feeds.feedblitz.com/gail-gardner
• Mobile optimized: http://m.feedblitz.com/gail-gardner

Do you have writers or books you want my readers to know about?
Please leave them in the comments. Relevant links will be approved.

Tagged as: small business, small business advice, small business authors, small business marketing