Green Options

I was recently asked to speak to The Eco Investment Club about marketing a green business. Since I’ve written before about How To Keep Your Green Business Afloat in 2009 and Recession Strategies For Eco Businesses, it was a matter of marshaling my thoughts and seeing what new ideas I might have discovered.

Trying to determine how to best build your list of followers can be a challenge and a raging argument is going on right now with the Twitterati on quality versus quantity. Is it better to follow lots of people and have lots of followers or does the quality of the follower matter

Hillary Bromberg offers, at Sustainable Life Media, an article titled: Ten Insights for Sustainable Brands in an Uncertain Economy. Since her advice is pretty good, I was tempted to just pass it along.

But, then I thought I might add a few insights of my own.

Take a look at this new video that I found on the Dell Social Media Facebook page. Green businesses, always current with the latest trends, are getting into social media in a big way. How about you?

Just about one year ago, Clorox launched their entry into the green and natural cleaning products category with Greenworks. And I wrote, in this piece, What Should An Eco Entrepreneur Do When The Big Boys Go Green?:

I’ve been spending a lot of my time these days checking out the wide variety of social networking tools available for growing green business. In particular tools for the B2B market have been springing up and taking hold across the web.
I found this interesting slide show about greenwashing and was struck by the slide above. This says it all in my mind. As green becomes the [...]

It’s important for growing companies to keep an eye on the overall market. While much of what makes entrepreneurs great is their ability to think out of the box, it’s what’s happening overall and how they fit into the general scheme of things that determines whether they succeed or fail.

So, I like to highlight some of the greater market trends in this blog. One of those of particular interest, one might say overwhelming interest, to green entrepreneurs is the looming scare of “eco fatigue”.

Is it real?

Will it impact green businesses?

Are you seeing it impact your business?

Here’s some tips from AdAge designed for large established companies but equally relevant for ecopreneurs. What do you think?

Sometimes it’s nice to communicate verbally for a change. I had that opportunity this week when I was a guest on PR 101 Radio - Marketing Advice for Small Business. Erika Taylor, from Three Girls Media conducted a great interview where i was able to discuss some of the pleasures and pitfalls of green marketing.

Check out my interview here [...]

According to the report, Trends in Trademarks, applications for patents on trademarks, logos and taglines reached an all time high in 2007. And chief among the requests…those related to green business.

New filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2007 topped 300,00 beating the previous record of 289000 in 2000, driven in part by new marks for eco-friendly products. The word GREEN was the most popular vehicle for communicating environmental friendliness. Applications more than doubled in 2007, increasing from 1100 to over 2400.