For small businesses and start-ups, it’s often not feasible to staff up every operational area during the growth stage. It’s also vital to continued growth to have a team that can support and execute your marketing strategy. That’s where the “vendor bench” comes in. 

If you know your business well, then you know who your competition is. And likely, so does everyone else. Acknowledging your competitors, or the counter-argument to your brand, can be a powerful way to tell your story, especially if the “other side” is well-known. 

LinkedIn and Twitter are filled with reading recommendations. Marketers and entrepreneurs, especially, love sharing business books, self-help, best practices guides and other nonfiction, work-centric reading materials. While there are definitely some “must reads” on those threads, and reading (or listening to the audio), in general, is always a good idea, sticking to nonfiction might be limiting your potential, even in the “professional” sense. If growth is what marketers are looking for, the fiction section is calling.