Internet Peer Groups, Knowledge Sharing, & the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

Knowledge is power, as the old adage goes. I would posit that in business, it is essential to profit.  And nowhere can you find more knowledge than the Internet.  Trying to wade through all the garbage, though, and find the valuable knowledge can take too much time – and time is money.  My business partner, Roy, says sales people have two things:  time and activities, and time is the scarce resource.  The key is to optimize for both.  This is true for most professions and very true for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

While the Internet provides millions of pages of content through blogs, news sites, aggregators, social media and on and on, there are a few tools and resources that can help significantly in finding the diamonds and gems out there to optimize both your time and knowledge.  These sites mostly all center on peer groups and knowledge sharing.

Those who know me know my favorite site is Reddit.  At first glance it may appear juvenile, full of memes, cats (though I do like cats and dogs), and at times grotesque.  However, the beauty of Reddit is that you can make it whatever you want it to be by fine tuning it through subreddit subscriptions.  There are subreddits for ANYTHING you have an interest in and there are many for business and every type of professions.  A couple of my favorites are /r/entrepreneur, /r/smallbusiness, /r/technewstoday, and /r/marketing…. and /r/buffalobills but that’s a separate post topic.

I can honestly say I’ve saved thousands of dollars directly and a great deal of time through tips, recommendations, discovering new software, etc. – and while learning fascinating things on a huge variety of topics, business and non-business related.  When I find something I think will benefit others in the community I try to give back by sharing, or give back by contributing to discussions as well as answering questions others submit. I also try to share these things on Twitter and Linkedin, which is one of the best things you can do to promote and grow your social media followings.

One of the latest great posts I came across was in the marketing subreddit where one redditor posted “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! – Book Summary“.  If you’re a small business owner or work in marketing, I recommend reading this.  After that I recommend setting up a Reddit account and subscribing to a few – or a few dozen – subreddits on topics you are interested in, both business and in your personal life. You can use the search box to search by your profession and/or industry to find new subreddits with your peers.