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How to get noticed
If you run a small business, chances are that you are working in a highly competitive market. Whether you run a coffee shop, an EBay merchant or a language school, your job is to get noticed in a crowded field with little to no money.
While having a marketing budget of next-to-nothing is not ideal, you do have some things going for you. You can take more risks, work at times when your bigger rivals are resting and you can develop a social media personality that bigger companies resist.
Two bits of advice
One of the best bits of advice I have received came second-hand from a friend who had worked for a successful entrepreneur. He would meet with his colleagues at member’s clubs around London and tell them to be as loud as they could — to get noticed.
When I first heard this I had the traditional British reaction: How American! The entrepreneur in question hails from New York.
I did nothing with that advice for far longer than I should have.
It took watching Gary Vaynerchuck’s videos to push me to be a little more American in my social media savvy.
Social media
If I had opened a shop selling antiques in my home town in the early nineties I would have been limited to putting the odd advertisement in my local…