For those of you who own your own business, and therefore do your own marketing, I have a really valuable recommendation for you. It’s a book called Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch, and although I think it could have a better title (imho), the content is great. It’s very simple (not having been a business major in college, I couldn’t handle anything too academic or theoretical), and not only does it spell things out very clearly, it also gives you very specific instructions and examples for how to do things. It actually makes follow-through easy…and I’m not great at follow-through, just ask my mom.
I’ve looked at books previously on marketing for a small business, but they usually define “small” as somewhere between 50-100 employees. Nearly everything in this book can be applied to my business, which is me, and me, and me. 
If you’re looking for a how-to marketing book, but not sure about spending money until you know more about the information and the guy who wrote it, check out his website www.ducttapemarketing.com. He gives away a lot of free information on the website, including an in-depth paper on a social media approach to marketing (which I was so impressed with that I went ahead and bought his book!)…it’s worth checking out.
This almost sounds like a paid advertisement, huh? It really isn’t, and I don’t have any investment (financial or otherwise) in whether you buy the book or not. I do have an investment (financial and otherwise) in making my business as successful as possible, and I figure we “little guys” (those of us with <50 employees!) can use each other’s support as much as possible, so I thought I’d pass the information along.
