Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed

Reprinted Courtesy of StartupAlmanac.com

Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed

When I first started looking through the Table of Contents of Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility and Crush Your Competition by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the first words out of my mouth were "Wow." I could see right away how complete the book was and how it covered all possible areas, as it has 80 chapters!

This is the kind of book you wished you had before you even started your business. The chapters are short and concise, and leave out the time-wasting fluff often found in other books. The author provides specific resources and web sites to go to, which is extremely helpful.

One of the things that I found interesting is that some of the recommendations could be applied to other areas of the business. For example, Chapter 6 - The Elevator Pitch describes the structure of creating such a pitch. But the same structure could also be used to create a blog post.

Chapter 9 on Google Codes and Alerts was great. I thought I knew all of them, but I learned a couple new ones, and it also reminded me to start using the ones that I already knew about.

The keyword research trick in Chapter 13 alone is worth more than the price of the book. Easy to do and very useful.

I could go on and on, as the book covers everything from analytics to sales copy to outsourcing. If you are just getting started in your business or you are already into your first, second, or third year of of your startup, I highly recommend that you read Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed.