New Business Marketing Basics

Suggestions for All Nonprofits, Entrepreneurs, & Authors

There are some basic needs all businesses share when getting started, especially for small nonprofits, entrepreneurs/small businesses, and authors. This post will shed some light on what you will need to start communicating with your audience.

This post is assuming you've done your homework to create your "brand" to begin your marketing. Your "brand" includes your logo, colors, fonts used, and much more. If you need ideas before diving into the communication piece, head to these posts - Engage Your Customers, Brand Updates, and Resources: Louise Harnby.

Website
This is your best focal point or store front to have in place. All other pieces you develop will hang off of this. Having a website, at least to start, lends credibility to your efforts. It shows the world you're serious about your project! Head to Why Create a Website if you need some convincing. 

Great initial websites that are affordable and easy to design:

• This post gives you a bit of an overview of my favorites.
• Weebly
• Wix
• Squarespace

​Social Media
This is likely the next most critical piece to get started - choose and start your social media platform. This is where my markets may find different needs for where best to focus your efforts. Another critical consideration is your comfort for where you spend your time and how you prefer to communicate.

The most basic consideration is your comfort with video creation for how heavily you may decide on your social media platform. Short-form vs long-form video comfort is also a consideration. YouTube reigns for long video content. Most of the other social media platforms now offer some variety of short-form video. 

Nonprofits
Nonprofit Tech for Good with Heather Mansfield is an incredible resource for all things communication in nonprofits. This study published this year (2025) gives amazing numbers for reference in what platforms are currently performing well. The Big Three for nonprofits currently seem to be:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Entrepreneurs/Small Businesses
The communication needs and markets are different! 

• LinkedIn - this is a must for your personal profile and it's highly recommended to create a "company page" as well. Many items may cross-post between them, but both are highly useful. We can chat on other posts about the benefits of both.
• The rest depends greatly on where your audience is and their age/demographics. Videos on these platforms tend to be key. 
  • Facebook remains the place for the older generations and donors
  • Instagram seems to be hot for millennials
  • Millennials and Gen Z consume a lot of video and are regularly on TikTok

Authors
Suggestions here will be dependent on your type of writing and genre for where your audience is. Fiction vs nonfiction may be a consideration. Younger vs older readers may be a factor. A number of these platforms have "book" specific sites to them for your focus.

• Instagram - search for Bookstagrams or even "reels" from favorite authors
• TikTok - a category within this platform is BookTok. Once logged in, you can search BookTok to find plenty of material.
• Goodreads
• LinkedIn - remains valuable to establish your credibility as an author. Great place to connect with folks to be a guest on podcasts or live events to talk about your work.

Newsletters
Once you have your website and social media in place, you can take a breath and consider your newsletter options. How will you share your news or spread the word? How will you get readers?

• Email your subscribers News in your customers' inbox remains key. There are a number of ways to get subscribers to your newsletter, but the key is to get folks to voluntarily give you their name + email address. There are "services" out there happy to sell you a list of names + emails, but they've been scraped from the internet and you don't have permission to send them content. There are a number of anti-spam laws now in multiple countries. Consult your government agency or even email provider for details. If you're looking for a round-up of affordable, easy to use services, refer to this blog post for details. 
• LinkedIn This is a great way to connect with your connections and share your news! The service is free. Your very first edition goes to all of your contacts, so it's recommended you hold on this until you have at least 1,000 connections. Once you create the newsletter, LinkedIn helpfully sends a quick note to all new connections asking them to subscribe to your newsletter. This happens on auto-pilot and you don't have to think about it. The caveat here is you don't "own" the email addresses of these subscribers. If you ever get locked out of LinkedIn for some reason, your entire database of contacts is gone. You can, however, see who the subscribers and commenters are and message them directly! 
• Consider a blend of the two options. Have an option on your LinkedIn newsletter to subscribe to your email list. 

A Good Start
This will get you started with your brand marketing. There's always far more that can be done including creating PR items on Canva and attending in person events. 

If you could use a hand getting started, I'd be thrilled to be of assistance, listen, or brainstorm ideas to set you on your way. Let's Chat or message me on LinkedIn!

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