The green entrepreneurs I speak with every day have great stories to tell about their phenomenal work saving resources, cleaning our energy, and creating a better world.  These stories do more than entertain; they get attention and bring in business.  Telling your story is one thing, but making sure that it’s heard is another.  Tools ranging from PR to Twitter can deliver your message, each with their pros and cons, and services like 3BL Media can amplify your story to reach more eyeballs and get noticed. 

The first step is paring down your message to be crystal clear, making it as short and simple as possible. The value of clarity is often overlooked; clarity helps the message to stick, and also helps entrepreneurs to better understand their own business. 

The next step is finding tools to deliver the message to the right eyes and ears.  The tools to boost your business visibility include:

1. Blogging – Blogging doesn’t cost anything and can connect you to large numbers of people, but it does take time and it’s not for everyone.  For blogging to attract an audience you need to post frequently, probably at least once a week.  This may not sound like much, but the entrepreneurs I know are incredibly busy people.
2. Social networking –Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are free and potentially powerful ways of making connections, but they are also full of noise.  The great hope is that your post will go viral, taking on a life of its own, but your content will usually need a big push to stand out and get noticed. 
3. Partnering with media distributors – If you already have content and want it to reach more people, services like 3BL Media amplify your message through high profile distribution to a big chunk of the CSR world.
4. Ads – Ads on the internet can be highly targeted based on demographics of websites.  An ad campaign does cost money, and the time to keep an eye on what is working, and not working. 
5. Public relations – PR can be immensely powerful; getting others in the media to talk about you can provide credibility.  It usually takes connections and time to make this happen, and the efforts of a paid professional. 

For entrepreneurs working on tight budgets, free tools like blogging, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook can be very attractive.  Small businesses are often so focused on their business and so cash strapped these days that they have little money for marketing.  Free social networking tools can accomplish a lot and should be used as much as possible, but they can’t always do the whole job on their own.  Public relations efforts provide a big boost with the right investment of time and money, although some businesses find it’s more than they can invest today. 

That’s where media services like 3BL Media comes in, providing a low cost way for green businesses to reach out and grab the attention of the CSR community and beyond.  To accomplish this, 3BL Media has assembled a network of media channels including opt-in subscribers, blogs, Reuter’s Project Insider, affiliate websites, the CSR Minute, and video feeds.  Altogether their network reaches hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.  It can be a powerful way to boost your signal, and I’ve recently partnered with 3BL to help small businesses get noticed even with the constrained budgets they are often faced with today.  

 No matter what approach you take, your story still has to be a good one to capture the imagination, but with a clear message, a compelling story, and the right strategy to tell it, your business efforts can be amplified many fold.  You have little to lose by getting your story heard, and quite a lot to gain. 

Contact Glenn Croston: glenn.croston@75greenbusinesses

About Glenn Croston: Glenn Croston is the founder of StartingUpGreen.com, helping businesses to start and grow green. The Green Biz Blast produced by Starting Up Green connects those selling and seeking green.  He is also the author of "75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference", and the author of "Starting Green: An Ecopreneur’s Toolkit for Starting a Green Business from Business Plan to Profits", a nuts and bolts guidebook.